Antique Couple, Dresdon Lace, Beautiful Detailing
by Halfpenny
Summary: Lassiter isn't used to having to work elbow-deep in chaos, which is probably why Shawn Spencer is slowly killing him.
1. Chapter 1

Antique Couple, Dresdon Lace, Beautiful Detailing

* * *

 _Lassiter isn't used to having to work elbow-deep in chaos, which is probably why Shawn Spencer is slowly killing him._

* * *

 ** _A/N – Takes place between the pilot and episode four of the first season. Lassiter-centric; established Lucinda/Lassiter. Rated for language and the assault and battery of porcelain._**

* * *

It took some detective work, but he figured out by Thursday that his hand hurt because he'd been spending most of the week throttling inanimate objects. Most times they were things that could take the abuse, like food wrappers or rubber-band balls, but that morning it'd been a styrofoam cup holding the dregs of his coffee. The mess had soaked the cuff of his sleeve and dripped halfway down the hallway before he realized he had a problem. "You have a problem," Lucinda said, attacking the stain with the tube of Tide To Go she kept in her purse. "You can't let him get to you like this, Carlton."

"He's not _getting to me,_ " but mostly he was occupied with the fact they were poised to botch the McCallum case and Lucinda's transfer notice was probably already in her mailbox. Last night had been an awkward game of emotional hide-and-seek for both of them: him letting her smoke her first cigarette in two years out on the balcony, her letting him screw her on the kitchen table instead of the bed because it made it easier for them both to walk away from each other afterwards. "This is a one-shot deal at best. Karen can't possibly be this naïve."

"And if he actually does close the case? What are you going to do then?"

He didn't know. To cover his confusion, he knocked Spencer stupid against the squad car at the McCallum mansion as he arrested him, hoping the exercise would clear his head. The reality was that Spencer was likely going to shrug off the trespassing charge with some pocket change and then move on to terrorize the next town over, and Lassiter would be stuck behind dealing with an outed inner-office romance and a partner whose entire career was suddenly under scrutiny just because he'd convinced her to start banging him five months ago.

He didn't have time to dwell on it, because the impact with the police car seemed to knock down the last load-bearing wall of Spencer's sanity. Lassiter stood and watched with the other officers as Spencer thrashed around the grass like he was being mauled by a cheetah, wondering what he'd done to deserve this. Getting together with Lucinda had been unprofessional but not really karmically punishable. Certainly nothing to deserve watching Spencer scream " _Calumite_!" and "Check the wound!" and " _For the love of god, check the wound!_ "

Lassiter was preparing a second attempt to haul Spencer off the ground when he spotted the blood draining out of McCallum's face. McCallum was staring at Shawn with a tight-lipped expression, eyes unblinking. His hand was clasped over his bandaged forearm.

Lassiter realized several things simultaneously. McCallum _had_ been their murderer all along, which made he and Lucinda just about the most unobservant fuck-ups this side of the San Antonio divide. A civilian had managed to implicate him in under seventy-two hours without any professional training, while Lassiter had sacrificed all his personal dignity and had pooled together all his resources and had come up with nothing. Worse than nothing, because once Internal Affairs caught up to him, there'd be no end to the things he could lose from there.

Aware that this could be his last act as Chief Detective, Lassiter read McCallum his rights and stuffed him into the backseat of the squad car. When he slammed the door and turned around, Spencer was looking at the car with his head cocked, looking uncharacteristically subdued.

The world had shifted on its axis while he wasn't looking, leaving him with a single outstanding need. "Seriously," he said. He met Spencer's eyes. One detective to another. "How'd you do it?"

"I really don't know," Spencer said vaguely, officially marking the closest Carlton Lassiter came to committing murder.

* * *

Lucinda stopped answering her phone later that week, prompting Lassiter to drive over to her apartment when she didn't show up for work. He keyed himself into the building and stalked up the steps, taking them by two, only to find her door stripped of decoration and locked, a pale shadow in the carpet where the welcome mat used to be.

He stood there a minute, stumped, trying to make sense of what he was looking at. Lucinda changed her front door decoration every month, hanging holly wreathes in the winter and dried flower arrangements in the spring. Everything down to her mounting nails had been pried out, leaving small constellations of holes in the wood and faded paint where tape had been pulled up. The only thing remaining was an envelope taped under the peephole with 'CL' penned on the front.

Lassiter worked the tape up gently to avoid making another mark in the paint, then folded the note into a smaller square and slid it into his wallet without reading it.

The sound of a door opening down the hallway brought his attention up. An elderly woman in a blue raincoat carefully made her way out of her apartment, muttering to herself, a reusable shopping bag looped over her knobby wrist. Despite her distraction, she noticed him immediately. "Carlton!" she exclaimed, brightening in honest pleasure. "I saw you on the six o'clock news last week! How's the getting, young man?"

"I—" His voice cracked. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Good as always, ma'am."

"Now, you keep those streets clean so an old woman doesn't have to do all the dirty work herself." She fussily fished her penguin keychain out of her purse, peeling the keys back one by one as she sought the right one. "Doctor says no more vigilantism until my knee knits. Just don't let them know I'm on hiatus, or the streets will be overrun."

"My lips are sealed, Mrs. Quinn."

"What brings you here, might I ask?" Mrs. Quinn sent him a sharp side-eye even as she located the apartment key. She set to work locking her door. "I'm a little surprised to see you here now that Lucinda's gone. Now, it's none of my business, Carlton, but I would have thought you'd help that poor girl move out. It took her most the day."

He could feel his heartbeat in his gut. His voice still wasn't working quite right. "When did she leave?"

"Well, Saturday, of course. Didn't she tell you? You really should have been there," she repeated disapprovingly. "I'm not sure what you were thinking, making her do all that herself."

"Did she say anything to you before she left?"

"This and that," she said, in that evasive way Lassiter allowed from old women he liked and pretty much no one else, not even orphans. "And a promise that I'll still hold you to dinner the first Tuesday of every month. No exceptions, young man. I know where you live."

He was still reeling, but it wasn't the time to deal with it. You waited until you were in a safe place to disassemble your gun. Instead, he forced himself to step away from Lucinda's door, walking towards Mrs. Quinn with his arm held out. "I wouldn't dream of missing our dinners," he assured her. "Please, allow me walk you out."

Mrs. Quinn demurred, hitting his arm even as she took it, the tough old broad. She insisted on taking the bus all the way down to the ground floor, but he drove her to the grocery store anyway, managing to get her back just in time for the news at six. She let him leave only after sending a tupperware full of homemade macaroons with him and extracting a promise that he wouldn't renege on their dinner dates, no matter how busy he got saving the world.

The light was flashing on his answering machine when he let himself into his house. He ignored it, stripping down to shower while his chicken kiev was cooking, hanging up what was salvageable and tossing whatever wasn't into the laundry basket. Dinner tasted buttery and his drink tasted like fizz. He zoned out somewhere in the middle of everything, letting the sauce congeal on his plate.

When it took more work to stay vertical than not, he cleaned up the kitchen, brushed his teeth, and went to bed.

The note stayed in his wallet.

* * *

"Try to behave yourself," Interim Chief Vick said Tuesday, handing him the file on his new partner, officially marking the second closest Carlton Lassiter ever came to committing murder.

* * *

Henry Spencer stalked through the station like a grizzled old bulldog that had scent-marked all of the desks before he'd retired, scattering officers left and right as he made a beeline for Lassiter's desk.

Lassiter was terrified by his approach for different, existential reasons. It hadn't mattered that Henry was a legend in the department with one of the best closing rates in the state, because all the peace and order he'd fought for his entire career had vanished after one night of getting busy with his wife. Now he was the father of a trainwreck that had been actively crashing for the past twenty-nine years, and no amount of damage-control could bring that peace and order back, no matter how many times he polished his gun or organized his fishing trophies or mowed his lawn with his toenail clippers.

Lassiter could think of at least seventeen different reasons off the top of his head to never have children. Seeing Henry standing in front of his desk, bald and wrinkled and looking a lot like he'd enjoy shoving his bad mood straight up someone's ass with his foot, brought Lassiter up to an even twenty. "Can I help you?" Lassiter said.

"Don't start with me, kid." Henry slapped an overstuffed manila folder down on the desk with a crack like thunder. Lassiter noticed several officers in his peripherals finding other places to be. "Keep them," Henry said. "I've got copies of all of them, one file in a fireproof strongbox. These are all the tips he's called in, all the crime he's been witness to, and all the consultations he's done on and off record. He fell off the grid for a while, so the list might not be fully comprehensive, but for the most part it's there in bulk. Keep it out of sight. If he finds it and asks, tell him you did the digging."

"First of all," Lassiter said, a little jarred by the use of 'kid' and also by the fact that the entire station was apparently staffed by bashful kindergarten girls, "my life does not revolve around researching the crap your offspring has done in his spare time. Second of all, who the hell do you think you are, coming in—"

"I've got a show coming on at two and a bird in the oven, so you can go ahead and keep your noise," Henry said. "I'm in here because Shawn never learned the difference between games and reality, and now he's got it in his head that he's going to be a detective, which means he's going to be a pain in your neck for as long as it takes to work it out of his system. I give it two to four months. In the meantime, no matter how good he thinks he is, he's still a civilian, which makes his safety this department's responsibility."

"Look, if it were up to me, I'd have thrown him out on his ass the minute he started spasming in lockup. It's the chief's idea to have him on, so take it up with her."

"I did. And now I'm taking it up with you." Henry was wearing an ear-piercing Hawaiian shirt and beach sandals that'd tapped the tile like castanets coming into the station. He looked nothing like Shawn at first glance. That changed when he leaned over to jab a finger towards Lassiter's nose, bringing the two of them face to face, and Lassiter was abruptly reminded of the anger he'd spotted behind Shawn's smirk during that first interrogation, flaring like the glint of glass under murky water. "I don't care what grudge you've got with him, and frankly whatever trouble he's got coming down on his head, he has coming," Henry said. "That's not the issue here. What I expect from _you_ is that you'll do the job you signed on for. You wear the badge. You bring him in as a consultant, you protect him on the field. Or there's no deal."

" _Deal?_ " Lassiter blurted, flabbergasted enough to forget himself. "Since when am I his keeper? For god's sake, Henry, if you're that hung up over it, just own up and admit to Karen that he's lying through his teeth. That'll be the end of everything right there."

To his surprise, Henry flushed. He straightened up, squaring his shoulders, putting distance back between them. "I didn't say the kid wasn't gifted," Henry said stiffly. "Just careless. He doesn't understand the risks. You and I do."

"And just what am I supposed to do about it?"

"Keep his ass out of the line of fire."

Lassiter wanted to bang his forehead against his desk. "And if he _runs into it?_ "

"Make sure you've got fire of your own to send back."

"Great, so I'm babysitting," he said. "How about this. How about we just arrest him, throw him into the cell for obstruction of justice, let him marinate until this blows over? How about that? Would that make you happy?"

"If that's what it takes to keep him out of the ground, _then yes!_ "

The station quieted under Henry's sudden bellow. Taken aback, Lassiter stared at Henry until Henry shifted his weight under the scrutiny, clearing his throat. "That's the size of it," Henry said, as though nothing had happened. "I've got to go before the bird dries out. I'll talk to you later."

"Spencer, look," Lassiter began reluctantly, but Henry was already moving away, flapping his hand in the air as though brushing the entire thing aside. A throng of officers discreetly parted for him on the other side of the room.

Lassiter sat there for a long time, trying to process what the hell had just happened.

By the time the other officers started trickling back to the area and O'Hara returned from the lady's room to unpack the last box of hers marked DESK SUPPLIES, Spencer's file was open and Lassiter had one more reason to hate himself.

* * *

The entire disastrous first meeting with O'Hara had been a palpable reminder that he was too old for twenty-something junior partners. Especially partners like O'Hara, who exuded sunlight with a determination that gave him indigestion.

He bawled her out over bringing him cold coffee that first morning, then bawled her out again when she became so flustered that she spilled it in his lap. It was clear she was bright and eager to please, which should have made it easier to deal with. The problem was, molding a fresh young impressionable partner took work, and Lassiter had already established he was too old for that bullshit, which left them both at square one.

Around the middle of the week, Lassiter remembered that he had to put food in his stomach in order for his body to function. He changed course on the way home for the night and dropped by Silvergreens, figuring he'd burned enough calories that week to earn some grease.

He ordered a Tillamook burger and a beer, undoing his top button halfway through when the air around him grew warm. His waitress winked at him from across the room when he did it, which might've interested him except he was too old for that bullshit too. Still, it was appreciated. As a reward he calculated a twelve percent tip in his head and left it down to the penny on the table, neatly stacked, before finishing the trip home.

He swayed a little when he kicked off his shoes, realizing that he was utterly exhausted. He showered and shaved on autopilot, neatened up the hair by his ears, trimmed his toenails and buffed his fingernails. He watched television on mute for nineteen minutes, then turned it off and sat in gloom for a while. The house talked to him in the silence: creaks of the frame and the floorboards as the ambient temperature steadily dropped, the grind of his ancient wall clock chugging away.

When the darkness started to make sense around him, he slid his phone out of his pocket and pushed 2 for Lucinda. Her voice mail activated after two rings. He hung up and tried again. This time it activated immediately.

He closed his phone. He reached up and fumbled for the switch on the lamp, painfully blasting his night vision apart, and spent the next several hours diligently combing through old case files that no one gave a shit about.

His head was pounding with fatigue, but his blood was humming incessantly, keeping him wired. At midnight he succumbed to crippling stress by firing up his internet, digging out his credit card, and retreating to his old coping strategy: ordering a metric ton of vintage ceramic figurines.

He stayed conservative at first, landing "Little Girl In Her Overalls Chopping Wood" and "Vintage Lassie Collie With Number On Paw". Then the slant of Spencer's smirk and Lucinda's empty apartment caught up with him again, leading him to R&W Berries Co's 'Bitch A Little, You'll Feel Better' figurine circa 1970, a Lefton Christmas candy cane angel bell ornament circa 1950, and a Josef original July birthday girl with a blue dress and a gold garland.

He capped it off with two ugly bookends, one of a girl reading and the other of a boy fishing, ponied up for shipping for sixteen items, before shutting off the computer. Then, with a suddenness that startled him, he couldn't remain vertical either. He stumbled to his room and barely managed to set his alarm before collapsing on top of his covers.

When he woke up his blanket was on the floor and his pillow was by his feet, and the phone was buzzing on his nightstand. He blinked at his clock for a moment, sorting out the numbers, then reached out and answered it on the fourth ring.

"Look, this is probably just a case of sabotage from some overzealous parent. Tell me again why we need this hack to come in and do our job?"

"The reality is that this could very easily slip through the cracks." Vick looked tired but alert. "The department is overtaxed and this case is highly publicized. The spelling bee participants will be in fifty different cities in a few days. We need this wrapped up quickly and we don't have time to be picky."

"Chief, the man solved _one case._ That doesn't make him a psychic!"

"That 'one case' involved a very high-profile murder, and he produced the key evidence to put McCallum away," Vick said. "Whatever his motives, whatever his true abilities, he has already proven himself useful. It's worth a shot to see if his success continues."

Lassiter could feel O'Hara hovering by the doorway like a nervous sunbeam. He'd seen her gun trembling in her hands just this morning as they'd pulled in their mark at the diner, but she'd stood her ground, which was no less than he expected. On the other hand she'd spent the rest of the morning clearly waiting for something from him. Maybe a pep talk, unaware that Lassiter made a policy of never giving pep talks. Especially to people who needed them. "I'm going to revisit the scene to make sure I have all of the details, then give him a call," Vick said. "I expect you two to handle any and all press. O'Hara, I want you to question Brandon Vu's mother again, make sure that she's given us absolutely everything. I want all the information we can handle going into this."

"Leave it to me," O'Hara said, right on cue.

Vick looked at Lassiter expectantly.

Lassiter mentally walked his way through the steps of shooting himself, predicting the pattern of bloodstains on the wall and the amount of brain matter, the cost of replacing the carpet and patching the wall, the amount of reconstruction they'd do to make him look good for his funeral. How many people would show up. Which woman his mother would bring to the funeral with her. Which—

"Detective," Vick said.

"On it, Chief," he said. He sounded normal, which probably surprised no one in the room but himself.

* * *

All evidence in the file Henry had given him pointed to Spencer spending his life drifting in and out of towns like stink, which might have been enough to cast doubts on his character had every article including him not been almost saccharinely positive. Athletic events, picnics, fund raisers, parades, animal rescues, clean-up efforts. Photo evidence from Montana to Michigan, from Maine to Florida, from Texas to Oklahoma: all of Spencer butting into local affairs, sloshing around, and leaving before he got wet.

It all burrowed straight under Lassiter's craw and stayed there, sharp and sour even after multiple cups of coffee. He stayed late into the nights, rolling his sleeves up to his elbows, letting life flow around the edges.

"What exactly are you expecting to find on this guy?" O'Hara asked tentatively, setting a fresh cup of coffee next to his mousepad. On the screen was a newspaper article dating back six years. The photo showed Spencer and an old man standing in front of a restaurant, both wearing chef hats. Spencer's arm was around the old man's shoulders as they beamed at the camera, both holding up improbably large hot dogs. Underneath, the caption read: _One Foot In Front of the Other: a young man's quest to revitalize a local business._ "Did he do something?"

"Just concentrate on the case," he snapped, grabbing the coffee and downing half the scalding liquid in a gulp. One of the blonde tendrils of her hair had slid over his shoulder as she'd leaned in. If his coffee mug shook a little as he set it back down, he blamed it on the caffeine.

* * *

Lucinda called him that night as Criminal Minds was winding down. The photographic evidence taken from the spelling bee was shoved over to the side of the coffee table, anchored by a pile of travel-sized Good & Plenty boxes he'd swiped from the basket at the guest check-in table. "Where are you?" he asked.

" _Oregon. They have me up by NCC, just outside Salem."_

"With…?"

" _Tony Greer._ "

His gun was in polished pieces on the coffee table. The television was on mute, projecting arrhythmic patterns of primary colors onto the wall. "Well? Is he worth a damn?"

" _He can't shoot but he can pirouette a car on a dime,_ " Lucinda said. " _I can't tell if it'll even out yet._ "

"Bring anyone down?"

" _It's mostly been quiet so far. Nobody has any vitamin D here._ _There's been a petition to put sun lamps in the interrogation rooms so we can dose up while we're grilling the suspects._ "

There was something in his mouth. A toothpick. He reached up to take it out, and only then did he realize he was shaking – full body tremors, starting from his calves and creeping up his spine to buzz at his hairline.

He set the toothpick down carefully on the edge of his plate and clinically waited for his body to get itself back under control. " _You were on the news,_ " Lucinda said.

"The news?"

" _They've been giving a lot of coverage to the sabotage at the spelling bee. They even ran the clip of your public address._ "

They had? He'd assumed anyone who wasn't local wouldn't be tuned into the spelling bee, sabotage or not. Then again, it was a national contest, so it made sense that it'd be given national coverage. In the meantime the shaking crept up his belly, threatening to get into his voice. "How did I look?"

" _Pale._ _Tired._ "

"Must have been the lighting in the hall." At the moment he'd bet anything she was on her couch, curled up on the left side, legs folded underneath her to help conserve heat. She would've gone shopping the second day there, filling her wardrobe with sensible tops better suited to the climate. She'd neatly fold the Californian clothes in a box and label it and then never wear those clothes again, because where she could be practical she could also be selfish, hording her past with no intention of revisiting it.

" _Did you read my letter?_ " she asked.

"Sure."

" _No, you didn't. Ten to one you only touched it long enough to put it into your wallet._ "

"I read it."

" _Carlton, I'm sorry,_ " Lucinda said. " _I won't even ask you to forgive me. What I did was despicable._ "

"Then why did you do it?" He actually hadn't planned on asking her that. He could've continued this ridiculous dance all night long just so long as it kept her on the other end. "Why didn't you let me help you?"

" _Because it would've made it too hard to leave._ "

"What is this, a Lifetime special? Don't fuck with me, Barry."

" _My feelings aren't invalid just because they're cliché,_ " she said. " _And don't swear at me. You know how I feel about that._ "

Lassiter reined himself in with effort. His shaking had since died down, leaving a deadly kind of calm in its wake. He'd welcome that focus in most situations, but being angry was currently the only thing protecting him from things that'd hurt worse. "I wouldn't have held you back. It's not like I could stop the transfer."

" _That's not what I was worried about._ "

"So what was it? You thought I wouldn't help you move the couch or something?"

She laughed. It wasn't a nice-sounding laugh, but he'd missed the sound of it anyway. " _That's always been your problem. You make things so hard when the answer is in front of you the whole time. You really don't think it would've been harder for me to leave if you'd been there?_ "

"You had to leave anyway."

" _So my feelings mean nothing? It wouldn't affect me at all to see you standing there as I drove away?_ "

"What, so I was supposed to wave a handkerchief after you? Is that what this is about?"

" _Oh god, I can't,_ " she said. " _I can't do this. Not tonight._ "

"Well, I don't know what you want me to do!" he snapped, frustrated. "You leave without telling me, you call me up out of the blue to apologize, and then you chew me out for not understanding your gibberish?"

" _No,_ " she said. " _You know what, I'm sorry. Forget it. It was stupid to bring it up._ "

"Don't hang up," and Lassiter hated himself immediately because he'd been on the offensive, and she _owed_ him for this, maybe forever, and their neediness had always been mutual. Not something for him to blurt out to her in the dark a hundred miles away.

" _I'm not going to hang up,_ " Lucinda said. " _I'm going to stay on the line, and you're not going to say anything else because if you do, I'm going to kill you. And I don't want to kill you._ "

"So you're staying on the line so we can not talk?"

"You're _not going to talk. You're going to set the phone down, reassemble your gun, turn off the TV, lie down on the couch, and pick the phone back up again. And you're going to keep me on while you go to sleep._ "

"What are we, thirteen? I'm not wasting my minutes on that."

" _Put the phone down and do it. I'll wait._ "

The erratic light from the TV was giving him a headache. Clenching his jaw, Lassiter tossed the phone down on the table and assembled his gun. The dishes from dinner still sat on the edge of the coffee table, congealing with sloppy vengeance at being ignored.

He finished in record time, jabbed the power button on the remote, and picked up the phone to bawl her out. " _Lay down,_ " Lucinda said, interrupting him.

"I'm not—"

" _Do it._ "

He kicked his feet up and slammed his head back against the cushion, hard enough to feel the unyielding edge of the arm on the other side. The darkness churned above him. The television had been muted the entire time, but without the light the silence in the room still seemed deeper somehow for the change.

Then gravity came crashing down to blindside him. He sank into the couch, palm pressed against his forehead, phone pressed against his ear. " _It's okay,_ " Lucinda said.

"I can't do this." He could barely hear himself speak, which was good because he already had concrete plans to kill himself for admitting this to her just as soon as daylight hit. Darkness just made it easier. "I can't solve this without you. It doesn't work."

" _It's just a different set of variables. You'll still get the same answer in the end._ "

"It doesn't work. It doesn't work. He's always there."

" _Stop thinking about it. Let it go for tonight. It'll be there for you in the morning._ "

"But you won't."

" _No,_ " Lucinda said.

He knew it was a trick of perception that made him feel Lucinda's breath in his ear, which was why he let himself enjoy it. Illusions only had power if you believed them. He didn't mean to fall asleep, but somehow he ended up dropping off anyway, phone wedged between the cushion and his ear.

When he woke up somewhere near four in the morning, the phone call had ended, the screen open and black under his cheek.


	2. Chapter 2

Spencer came into the station the next day with a brace on his leg and a rousing story about being attacked by sentient pinecones. Lassiter was truly disturbed that his knee-jerk response was satisfaction. It was one thing to wish for Spencer to get what was coming to him, but Lassiter had become a cop for a reason. Judging by the conspicuous absence of Spencer's motorcycle and the skid marks on him, Lassiter was willing to bet someone had run him off the road. He had enough pride in himself and his calling not to brush that off, as much as it stirred up something in some dark, pleasurable place in him, lean and unblinking and with teeth.

Karen dismissed Spencer and Guster from her office immediately, citing a lack of evidence in Spencer's theories on the spellmaster's death, and for once Lassiter followed them out. He grabbed a hold of Spencer's shoulder before he got through the door, ordered, "Out," to a stammering Guster, and led Spencer away to the bench furthest back in the receiving area, away from the noise. "If you're wondering, my erogenous zones include the backs of my knees, my right hipbone, and the pudendal nerve," Spencer said. "In case the plan is to rob me of my virtue, but tenderly. Like coaxing a bee away from a flower with a prettier, yet more malodorous flower."

"Shut up." Lassiter shoved him down onto the bench. There was a noticeable pallor lurking underneath Spencer's tan. "I want the license of that car that ran you off the road."

"In the car's defense, I think it was actually a person that did it," Spencer said. "I don't want to throw any unfounded accusations around in case it's got go-karts at home."

"Cut the crap and give me the number."

"You're assuming a lot of things here, Lassie. First of which was that I was run off the road. Statistically speaking I could have just as easily driven off an overpass or ran into a door."

"There aren't any doors on the highway," Lassiter said between gritted teeth.

"See, that's your first problem," Spencer said. "People like me, we see doors everywhere. Opportunity is waiting and you have to be ready to answer the call. Also, there are so doors on the highway. At least two per car. Usually four. Are you sure you're a detective?"

"Spencer, I am this close."

"Look, pretending I did get run off the road, I have yet to perfect the art of jotting down notes while face-plowing a trench," Spencer said. "Let's be serious. What's the real reason I'm here?"

 _The real reason._ Lassiter spent a moment studying the inside of his eyelids. As if this wasn't a police station, and he wasn't a cop, and Spencer wasn't the target of what had probably been attempted murder if the universe were at all just.

He was already regretting this but it was too late to back down. "You and I both know something went down, Spencer. If you don't want to cooperate, that's your business. Just don't expect me to take you seriously later."

Spencer's eyes did that thing Lassiter had found disturbing from day one: rapid refocusing, a dozen tiny readjustments in the span of a few seconds, before settling down again. "Allow me to ease your conscience by reminding you that you've never once taken me seriously," Spencer said. "But I'm sensing you're unsatisfied with the case. You still feel there are loose ends."

"What you're sensing is my fist about to go into your face." Was it nystagmus? Lassiter's great-uncle had had it, but as far as he remembered from those few, terrifying times he and his sister had been forced to speak with him in their childhood, the movement had been constant, not intermittent. Spencer's eyes twitched noticeably several times an hour, but at any other time they were steady as a spotlight. "And I don't feel 'unsatisfied'. This is an accidental death caused by the ingestion of shellfish. Your case doesn't hold water and you know it. _Give it up._ "

"I'd pretend to be shocked at your lack of creativity if your OCD cycle of the same seven ties hadn't already clued me in long ago," Spencer said. "The guy was what, seventy-something? What seventy-something doesn't know their own allergies? C'mon, Lassie, you're better than this. _Work with me_. You seriously don't think something's up with all this?"

"Allergies can develop later in life," Lassiter said, but the uncharacteristic straightforwardness grudgingly got his attention. "Not only that, sixty percent of shellfish allergy cases manifest in adulthood. It's not only possible, it's statistically likely."

"If you punctured that guy with a chopstick all that would come out'd be brown sauce. You think one day his dumplings just happen to come with a side of anaphylaxis?"

"Not every Chinese place uses them. It was probably just bad luck."

"Oh come on, _every Chinese place uses them_ ," Spencer said. "See, _this_ is the problem with becoming a cop. Right here. After a few years you guys all turn into a bunch of paranoid dwarf hamsters. There's life beyond the wheel, you know? If you just squeeze out of your cage you find all sorts of good stuff. Like Cheetos and fruit roll-ups and those ring-pop things you give to the girl in third grade that you want to marry, but dump a week later when you find out she doesn't like tree forts. Then you camp out under the refrigerator and make a fortress out of raisins, and maybe one day slip outside and I find your skeletal remains three years later in the box with my old roller skates."

"Spencer, I didn't come over here to discuss your half-assed theories about the case," Lassiter said, reflecting that this was probably the clearest and most accurate preview of the Irish Catholic hell waiting for him after death. "If you remember the license, fine. If you don't, we're done here."

"Sorry, Lassie." Spencer's tone remained congenial, but something had shifted in his eyes. It was a sharp, unkind glint of humor, like he was patronizing a particularly irrational child. It took absolutely every scrap of professional restraint for Lassiter not to punch the look off his face. "The knock on my leg must have given me amnesia. Spirits willing I can recover my memory in time, but as we all know, the spirits can be capricious. One can only hope for the future aggiornamentus of the spirit world so it may better fulfill the needs of this new fast-paced and murderous world."

"That's 'aggiornamento', and don't screw with me, Shawn!" The harassed voice came from somewhere behind them. Lassiter turned to see Guster jerk and duck back out of sight again behind a pillar.

Shawn was still smiling when he turned back. "So. We done here?"

Lassiter didn't move, because at that moment he honestly didn't know what would happen if he did. "Get out of here," he said. "Don't come back until you have something useful."

Spencer's grin went wobbly as he climbed to his feet, but was back by the time he'd gotten himself upright. "The spirits tell me I'll see you soon," he said, cupping his palm dramatically towards his temple. "The signs will be 'coconut' 'Mellow Yellow' and 'paisley'. When you see these in tandem, know that you are being summoned to a higher plane of reasoning."

Lassiter didn't move until Spencer had safely made it out the door. When it shut, he relaxed his fist, letting the blood rush back into his fingers.

His heart was still hammering when they arrested the perpetrator that evening after the spelling bee, one murder confession and one PR disaster later. Spencer caught his eye on the way out and gave him a thumbs-up before being swarmed by reporters. "You're angry with me, aren't you," O'Hara asked him after they shoveled the perp into the car.

"Angry?" His voice was pleasant. He could feel his hand trembling as he started the car and _it pissed him off,_ because heart attacks at his age weren't unheard of and he'd done nothing so far to deserve one. "Now that would just be silly, O'Hara. Why would I be angry that you ran crime scene evidence through toxicology without my knowing, revealing it in front of a camera crew broadcasting to millions? Why should I be angry that you trusted a civilian consultant more than your own partner? That's just absurd."

"Okay." O'Hara's breath escaped in a relieved rush as she tucked her hair back over her ear. "I was really worried I'd upset you. But I figured, I know you, you like results, so you wouldn't mind if I did a little digging of my own. And Shawn seemed so sure, so I thought it'd be irresponsible not to look into it. I knew you would've done the same if he'd come to you."

He slammed the car into reverse, nearly taking out a pedestrian, and never mind the other thing. _This_ was his imminent Irish Catholic hell. 

* * *

Nine out of sixteen of his packages arrived at his house on Monday. Some of the figurines came in their original dog-eared boxes, but others floated, heavily encased in bubble wrap adrift a sea of packing peanuts.

He set aside all the bubble wrap in a neat pile and banished the packing peanuts into the biggest box, shoving it off to the side where they could do no damage. The apartment seemed almost festive with the additions. He nearly felt cheerful as he went into work that day, until it occurred to him that he hadn't called his estranged wife in over a month.

It wouldn't have been a problem except that he was still trying to get back together with her, and not calling her hadn't elicited any of the appropriate responses in him. Guilt was a missing motivator. The fact that he didn't think about her, really at any part of the day that mattered, was another problem.

He wrote a reminder on a post-it, then immediately destroyed the evidence because it infuriated him that he needed to remind himself. On one hand he shouldn't have to make the effort, because months later she was _still_ in the wrong, and Lassiter had never subscribed to the idea that he should accept blame just because it was easier that way. On the other hand, she clearly wasn't in a hurry to contact him, and at the end, fault or no fault… Victoria was his wife. Not Lucinda.

 _I care about this relationship,_ he thought again as he sent her an e-mail inviting her to dinner on Friday. _I care enough to make this work._ He'd catch hell for using a work computer but he had to do it before he could change his mind. Years of detective work had taught him to strike while the iron was hot.

When her response came he didn't have the nerve to open that up either, officially moving it beyond avoidance and right on to an unflattering character trait.

* * *

Spencer was in the station constantly over the next several days. The first couple of times he came in with the brace, but by the third time it was off for good, leaving him with only a slight trace of a limp. He left a slew of disruptions behind him wherever he went, staging palm readings and offering to divine the financial futures of household pets. Wherever he was, whatever he did, productivity took a dive.

Obnoxious as it was when Spencer was present, Lassiter found it far more disconcerting when he was out of sight. He'd stumbled across Spencer sneaking about in the records room, scrounging in the fridge in the lounge, sitting in on briefings – and really, _what the hell_ , this wasn't a bookstore. Most of the things that went around here were sensitive, and Spencer seemed to have his hands in everything, permitted or not.

Lassiter had stopped researching around the point that he realized no amount of information was going to change Karen's mind, and that whatever information he could gather from this point could be done just as well firsthand. The thing was that while Spencer was insufferable, there were certain things that he did that Lassiter couldn't write off as generic irritants.

Case in point, every once in a while Lassiter would be on the move, maybe grabbing a file from storage, and he'd turn the corner and Spencer would just be standing in the middle of the hallway. Not moving, not engaging the officers around him. Just standing in his usual ear-piercingly loud polos, as if waiting for someone to wind his mechanism back up.

Lassiter had barked at him the first couple of times it'd happened, getting some perverse pleasure out of the way Spencer jumped, but other times he just stood there with his coffee and wondered what the hell. Spencer's gaze would often have a fixed point, but other times it would be flitting around so quickly that it was impossible for Lassiter to track where he was looking. If he even _was_ looking anywhere – which at that speed, Lassiter highly doubted.

"I'm not touching it, Detective," Karen said when he approached her about it. "I don't know, and I don't want to know."

"Chief, the man is clearly insane," he said. "We're giving him access to sensitive files when he's having psychotic breaks in the middle of the station. At what point do we send him packing?"

"When he stops bringing me results," she said, and pointed her pencil past him, to the door. "And while we're at it, I should mention that same goes for all of you. Now get out there and start harvesting."

* * *

There was a muffin on his desk when he came in the next morning, and O'Hara was missing. Lassiter logged these two things as he hung up his jacket, put the files he was reviewing into the top drawer of his desk for later inspection, then slid the bottom drawer of his desk drawer open to retrieve a clear evidence bag from the kit he had stashed there.

The phone rang. Lassiter snapped a latex glove on one hand and answered with the other. Keeping three quarters of his attention on the call, he spent the remaining quarter angling the muffin into the bag and sealing it up. After he hung up, he separated a piece of his personal stationary from the stack and wrote a report, ending it with a brisk note (' _found on corner of desk; confirm possible contamination, pls expedite_ ' _)_ and called McNab over. "Sir?" McNab said.

"Deliver this to toxicology," he said, handing it off. "And get back here double time. I've got work for you."

McNab lifted the bag up to eye-level to peer at it. "And don't let them get away with the 'we're too swamped' crap," Lassiter added belatedly. "Last time I was down there I busted them playing ping-pong on the exam table with autopsy saws. They've got more than enough time to run that for me."

McNab didn't move. Lassiter peeled off his glove and dropped it in the trash, then straightened and lifted an eyebrow at him. McNab jumped under the suddenness of his gaze. "Problem?" Lassiter said.

"Sorry," McNab said. "This bag, right here?"

"Do you see another evidence bag here?"

"It's just… it looks like a muffin in there."

"Is it?" Lassiter feigned polite surprise. "I hadn't noticed. How stupid of me. Thank you for bringing it to my attention, McNab."

"Oh, whew." McNab seemed to shrink an inch in sheer relief. Cheerful again, he lowered the bag and made to open it. "I figured there had to be some kind of mix-up. I had one a couple of minutes ago and they're really good. Juliet—"

"McNab."

McNab paused, thumb under the tab. "Sir?"

" _Take it to the lab_."

"But…" McNab looked uncertain again. "But I thought—"

"Of course I know it's a damn muffin, McNab, do you think I'm a complete idiot?"

"Well, no, but—"

"You think I'd hand you an evidence bag not knowing there's a muffin in there?"

"… no?"

"Then what are you waiting for? Take it to the lab."

McNab stood there another moment, paralyzed with confusion.

Lassiter stood up. "Yes, sir." McNab sprang into action so quickly he banged his hip on the edge of Lassiter's desk.

Lassiter went to get a coffee. By the time he came back, O'Hara was at her desk. She was dressed in a charcoal-grey pantsuit with a silk blouse the color of her eyes. She visibly perked up when he entered the workspace, which was something he still couldn't wrap his head around. Even Lucinda, whom he'd generally tried to spare the worst of his moods, had known to check under his eyes before engaging him in the morning. "Good morning, Carlton," O'Hara said. "Beautiful day, isn't it?"

"Your point?" he grunted, hiding his awkwardness by burying his face in his coffee mug for a while.

"It's not supposed to have a point," she said. "It's a greeting. Like 'how are you'. You say hi and you comment on the weather."

"No I don't."

"I meant 'you' as in 'people in general'."

"Are people in general now working here?"

"Carlton," she said. "It's a nice day. I commented on it. It's done. Let it pass."

Lassiter wasn't quite sure how to interpret this. He'd always been a morning person but never a cheerful one. Nowhere near her caliber anyway. He wasn't even sure his mouth could curve that way until at least noon.

Unexpectedly, though, steadily defrosting with the application of his first coffee, he surprised himself by continuing to feel awkward. It wasn't as if she hadn't had a point. They'd had some overcast days that week. This morning had been the first time in a while that the sun had shone brightly as he'd walked inside.

He skipped pleasantries in general because conversation tended to bore him, but he was forced to admit that O'Hara had remained helpful and pleasant the past week, despite significant opposition. It wouldn't kill him to return the favor once in a while.

He cleared his throat gruffly. "Good visibility. Helps to make a clean shot."

O'Hara glanced up. He realized that in the time it'd taken him to decide how to answer, she'd already absorbed herself in her morning's work. "Sorry, what?" she said.

It was too late to back out, so he said, "The weather."

"What about the weather?"

"I just said that it provided good visibility. Makes it easier to hit the target."

"Oh," she said. Her elbows found her desk. She leaned her chin forward onto the backs of her hands and studied him. "You know, I find that's what I've always enjoyed most about warm, sunny Californian days. The fact that I can kill someone easier than I can on a rainy day."

 _Really?_ He was surprised and a little pleased. He wouldn't have suspected she thought along those lines. Maybe there was hope for her yet. "I see you're not hungry this morning," she added before he could follow up. "That's always good."

He subsided in confusion. "Breakfast," she supplied. "I can sense you've eaten a good breakfast this morning."

" _Sense?_ "

"Yeah. You know. Like." And she wiggled her fingers playfully by her head.

The faint sense of camaraderie they'd been cultivating died with a scream. Lassiter mentally reviewed the locations of his firearms. In every post-apocalyptic movie, killing the people who showed signs of infection was the first step to containing mass-contagion. "What is it you're trying to pull?"

"Nothing," O'Hara said, looking startled at the sudden edge in his tone. " I was just… looking at you, I could tell you're not hungry. And that's good."

"What's good?"

"That you've eaten."

"What the hell areyou _driving at,_ O'Hara?"

"You know what, never mind," she said quickly. "Just forget I said anything. Okay?"

He stared at her a minute longer. "I'm just… gonna go file something," she said. "I'll be back. Um, later."

"Okay," he said.

"Okay." She backed up, ran into a passing officer, apologized, and took off, smart shoes clacking on the floor.

Lassiter fetched a granola bar out of his desk and unearthed last night's files, and that's what he got for trying to communicate in the morning, apparently.

* * *

Another case fell in their laps the next week. This time Lassiter was ready. It was a sticky one, the best possible kind. A five million dollar engagement ring that up and vanished without a trace, filthy rich clients with reputations to uphold, with the wedding coming up at breakneck speed.

He put everything else on the back burner and threw himself in headfirst. He researched everyone and everything – the list of people involved in the wedding, the cut and quality of the ring, the hotel's security, the hotel's staff. By the time the wedding party was brought to the station, ready for questioning, Lassiter was raring to go.

He strode into the interrogation room only to find Spencer already there, gaily chatting up the maid of honor. Lassiter felt rather than saw O'Hara start beside him. For his part, the first emotion that registered was mostly confusion. For all he'd caught Spencer skulking around the station for the past few days, he was still flabbergasted at the number of places Spencer could slither into without an entire building of trained police officers catching him.

Then Spencer started running his mouth, introducing everyone and taking special care to mention Lucinda's transfer and the circumstances behind Lassiter receiving a new partner, and Lassiter's vision whited out. Keeping a pleasant look on his face, he slid an arm around Spencer's back and gripped his shoulder, steering him gently past a dumbfounded O'Hara and down the hallway towards the exit.

He kept the smile on his face, tuning Spencer's chatter out all the way to the end of the hallway, then unceremoniously hurled him against the wall. Spencer used the rebound to spin himself around, a stunned look on his face. "Listen to me, Spencer." Lassiter's voice came through gritted teeth, but he kept it low. Controlled. "The department's reputation is on the line with this one. If I catch you anywhere near this case I will throw every book I can find at you."

"What if you find the Bible?" Spencer's reply was just as quiet, not missing a beat. "You gonna throw that too? Seems a little sacrilegious to me, doncha think?"

He thought about just how easy it would be to take Spencer apart. This angle, the differences in height and ability, in strength and training. It would take ten seconds to put him on the floor and keep him there. Twenty tops. No cameras in this part of the building. He could write it off as Spencer getting belligerent and threatening, demanding to go back to the interrogation room. He'd already shown a glimpse of that temper back in the chief's office during the spelling bee case. Lassiter had seniority. Vick would believe him. Spencer was the unknown element, the wild card. Lassiter was the trusted detective with a sterling reputation and countless solved cases under his belt.

He was a split second from throwing it all away when he got his first good look at Spencer's face. Spencer's eyes were unblinking on his, his nostrils flaring, his jaw set in defiance. When Lassiter looked closer, however, he realized that Spencer's pupils were dilated. The color was gone from his face, leaving behind a cast that looked greyish in the weak lighting of the corridor.

The discovery that Spencer was afraid killed every shred of rage in him. After all this time – all the threats of legal retaliation, of jail time, of any punishment Lassiter could level at him that was sanctioned within the law – this was what had gotten to Shawn. Leading him down a deserted hallway and pinning him against a wall.

He turned away without another word and made his way back down the hall, leaving Spencer behind to stare at his back.

O'Hara was making polite conversation with the wedding party when he got back to the interrogation room, which he mentally jotted down as something to bark at her for later. He got straight down to business, rehashing names and roles and relevant data. After getting their contact information and telling them the department would be in touch, he dismissed them and left O'Hara to deal with the pleasantries, which would probably confuse the hell out of her later seeing as he was planning to yell at her for being to pleasant.

That done, he made his way to the bathrooms at the rear of the building, carefully tucked his tie out of the way, and lost his breakfast in the sink.

* * *

There was a package from Lucinda on his front porch when he got home, as well as the remaining packages from his figurine splurge. He piled the latter just inside his door, then put his ear to the one from Lucinda. When he determined it was safe, he came in the rest of the way, toeing off his shoes, and set it on the kitchen table for the moment while he went to change.

On the way back he checked the position of all his guns, examined all the windows for signs of tampering, ensured that everything was where he'd last left it. That done, he retrieved his box cutter from his desk drawer and went to work on the tape securing the package. A few clean swipes and it lay open, frothing with bubble wrap.

There was a wide, flat tupperware container slid down along the back of the box, secured with scotch tape. He lifted it out first. It was filled to the brim with cookies. A quick glance at the post-it note on top revealed they were cinnamon, baked two days prior, kept fresh in the airtight container.

He cracked it open, took an appreciative sniff, and set it aside to open the envelope. To his surprise there was a gift card for Stella Mare's inside setting her back seventy-five dollars. There was also a 'thinking of you' Hallmark card with a stock message he didn't bother reading, but he did open it up to scan Lucinda's clean cursive underneath. _"I'm bored and need a laugh. Have them take a video of you trying to order the raspberry ding-dongs while desperately trying to avoid the word 'ding-dong'. –L."_

Like it was his fault they'd named something so delicious something so stupid. Feeling his face burning, Lassiter grumpily set it aside and moved on. Inside another container, wrapped within an inch of their lives in bubble wrap, were two bottles of gun oil – Crouse's Pine Scented and Cedar Scented, his cheap and guilty favorites.

He called her while his last kiev was baking in the oven. "You don't have to keep apologizing. I've already chalked your episode up to female vapors."

" _I'm not apologizing, and if I didn't know you were kidding, I would drive down with the force of a thousand frontier women to knee you in the groin,_ " she said. " _The recipe made about four million of them. I even sent some to your mother._ _How are they?_ "

"They're good." He'd had three earlier and was unsuccessfully trying to feel bad about it. "Why does everyone keep trying to feed me?"

" _Because nobody ever sees you eat._ "

"I eat all the time."

" _In front of people?_ "

… did he? "This isn't much of an apology."

" _It's not meant to be one,_ " she said again, which was probably true. Lucinda came across as very meek and reserved at the station, but when push came to shove her backbone was as straight as his own. They were both different people off the clock, but Lucinda in particular had retained that ability to relax after hours, to leave cases at the desk and come back to them in the morning. More than likely this was a simple gesture of friendship. Maybe with a touch of mother-henning, but that's as far as the conspiracy went.

He was about to thank her for the gift card – because posturing aside, Stella Mare's was expensive and the amount she'd spent on him altogether was actually kind of disconcerting – but she spoke before he could get to it. " _By the way, I did a bit of digging on your new partner. Transferred from Miami, right?_ _She's actually got pretty impressive credentials. You two are a good match._ "

"She's all right." She'd spilled coffee again over his notes on the Maxwell case again that afternoon, officially marking the last time he told her to fetch him coffee. Only after he'd made that resolution did it occur to him that she might have been doing it on purpose to produce that exact result. "Wet behind the ears, but she's partnered up with the best detective on the force. She'll be able to learn from me and get her head on straight."

He could feel the breath of her chuckle in his ear. " _I love that you're serious._ "

"Of course I'm serious," he said, affronted. "I have the highest rate of arrests, I'm the best shot in the department – by far— and _no_ one else has my instincts when it comes to catching scum on the streets. She couldn't have done better. I'd venture to say that she was even _lucky_."

" _It's not the validity of the claim that's in question, it's your humility._ "

"Oh." He frowned. "Who needs that?"

" _By the way._ " There was a sharp clatter of pans on the other end, making him jerk the phone away from his ear a moment. Evidently she was cooking too. " _I wasn't going to say anything, but I think you should know._ _Are you handling anything sharp?_ "

"What? No."

" _Victoria e-mailed me the other day._ "

He'd been sliding his Brita out of the refrigerator to refill his glass. At this he stopped, setting it on the counter, feeling cold. "She did _what?_ "

" _She said she'd tried to e-mail you, but you didn't respond. She tried your cell too, but said it was a wrong number._ _I didn't want to give her the new number without asking you first, so I said I'd get a hold of you for her._ "

… that's right, he'd changed phones. It hadn't even occurred to him to tell his wife. "I'm sorry," he said gruffly. "She had no business contacting you."

" _It wasn't aggressive. And it wasn't as if she didn't have the information already, we've been partners for years._ "

"Well? What did she say?"

Lucinda didn't answer a moment. He imagined her getting her potholders down from the cabinets over the oven, toeing the refrigerator closed. It was early in the week, so it would probably be spaghetti or chili tonight. Something to easily reheat as the week wore on and her energy waned. " _I'd rather not repeat it,_ " she said finally. " _But I think you need to check your mail._ "

"Rather not repeat it?" The cold feeling was rapidly heating up to anger. "What did she say,Barry? If she went after you in any way—"

" _It wasn't aggressive,_ " Lucinda repeated. " _But I think you should check your mail._ "

Lassiter stood seething in the middle of his kitchen, debating whether or not to go after this. Most times Lucinda was up front with him and he with her, because that's what it took to be partners in a job that tried to kill you, but sometimes she would randomly close off and no amount of yelling on his end would net him information. Apparently this was one of those times. "Fine," he said curtly. "Thanks for the package. Go make dinner."

" _One more thing,_ " she said as he was about to hang up impressively. " _Sorry to backtrack, but there's one other thing you should be aware of. Your comment about being the best shot in the department reminded me._ "

"I _am_ the best."

" _Shut up and listen. The chief is still hiring Shawn Spencer on for cases, right?_ "

"What's that got to do with—"

" _He's an excellent shot,_ " Lucinda said. " _I forgot to mention it a few weeks ago, but now that we're on the subject, I think you should know. He hides it, but he's had firearm training. A lot of it. He out-shot me at the range._ "

"What?" Again his incredulity ground him to a halt. "You let that psychopath down in the range? With _actual weapons?_ "

" _I was trying to knock him off-balance. We were exchanging information on the McCallum case and I had a hunch he knew more than he was letting on._ "

"What's wrong with you!"

" _Look, I didn't want to talk where it was quiet and someone could overhear, and I thought maybe seeing me shoot would rattle him into giving something up by mistake._ "

"You gave classified informationto a civilian regarding a murder case? Are you listening to yourself? Do you know how much trouble you could get in for that?"

" _I don't seem to be all that worried about it at this point, do I,_ " she said dryly. Something hissed in the background; she'd probably just thrown some onions into a pan. Chili, then. " _Don't bother raking me over the coals for it. I'm just saying you should watch yourself around him._ "

"What makes you think I don't already? I don't need a psych eval to know the man's off his rocker. I've tried telling Vick he's dangerous."

" _I wouldn't say he's dangerous. But he is hiding._ "

"Yes," Lassiter said impatiently. "He's hiding the fact that he's _dangerous._ "

The sigh and audible fumble suggested she was switching ears, her old tactic of stalling for time while she thought of ways she'd like to kill him. " _I think that he thinks_ you're _dangerous, so he's hiding from_ you."

"I'm not dangerous," he said, just to be a contradictory asshole.

" _If it'd been you down at the range, I don't believe for a second he would've given away how well he shoots. I was less of a threat, so he let his guard down. That's all I'm saying, Carlton. We don't know everything about him, and we don't know what his game is. But he sees and hears everything. Just… be careful._ "

"If he thought you weren't threatening, he's not much of a psychic."

" _If he were any less of a psychic, we'd still be partners._ "

Agitated, unsure whether to scoff or be angry or both, Lassiter ground his teeth until his jaw hurt. " _That's all,_ " she said. " _You can hang up now if you want._ "

"I wasn't going to hang up."

" _Yes you were. I don't mind. It'll make you feel better to show some expression._ "

"It's not hanging up if you give me permission."

" _Any longer and I'll hang up on you._ "

"Fine." He hung up and it did make him feel better, incidentally.


	3. Chapter 3

It was discriminatory to suspect the Maxwell family on the basis of them being rich, so Lassiter instead suspected them on the basis that he disliked every single one of them personally. He'd seen firsthand the miracles people with resources could accomplish. The stolen wedding ring case had about a dozen suspects whose primary excuses seemed to range between 'drunk' and 'missing because drunk'. With a little bit of ingenuity – a few greased palms, a little bit of wealth and influence to smooth the way – someone could have easily constructed a replica of the room where the crime took place. It wasn't implausible. It was batshit, but it wasn't implausible.

Lassiter had made a successful career out of following up on batshit-but-not-implausible leads, so he wrote up six separate drafts to make sure he wasn't batshit. At the end of the day, the theory did cover most of his bases. The crime was committed in front of video surveillance, but to have nothing on the tapes, no evidence of tampering… it was just too much to swallow. Barring 'theft by ghost' or 'sentient and malicious AI', a duplicate room created by a family with millions to burn no longer seemed so crazy.

He burned some cash of his own booking a suite at the De La Cruz, choosing the room right above the Maxwell wedding party. He ordered a chef salad from the kitchens and re-watched the security tapes for another hour while he parceled his croutons away from his grape tomatoes. The more he viewed the unbroken footage, the more his theory seemed to fall in place. Sure it was a little out there, but it _fit._ He'd come up with a lead, and he hadn't needed uppity junior partners or psychics or Interim Chief Vick breathing over his shoulder in order to figure it out.

Freshly energized, Lassiter wrapped up his investigation and called for a conference. By the end of the debriefing, the hairs on the back of his neck were up and his ears were flushed and he could have easily killed the next person who laughed, except _no one else heard laughing_. The laughter was apparently all in his head, and that did a lot worse than make him angry. It terrified him. "Listen, Carlton, I know how you feel about… outsourcing," O'Hara said tentatively as the rest of the officers filed out of the room. "But maybe we should… I don't know, start thinking outside the box? I mean, Shawn's had really close contact with the people involved. Whether he's psychic or not, he can still read guilt, can't he? Maybe if we had a different perspective, just for profiling purposes—"

"O'Hara." If life were fair, he'd have already gotten a promotion based solely on the fact that everyone around him was alive when he really wanted everyone around him to be dead. "If you mention that name _one more time_ today, I swear by everything that is holy that I will stand in front of the altar on this couple's wedding day and dredge up every grisly crime statistic I have memorized while they're trying to recite their vows."

O'Hara shut up immediately, proving once again that a.) he didn't need a profiler to do his job for him and b.) he didn't need to threaten to kill someone to make his point. Also that he was getting to know her well enough to know which buttons to push, and that in its own way was just as terrifying as losing his mind.

When he went back to the front desk, the receptionist flagged him down and informed him he'd racked up over three hundred dollars on room service. Lassiter's first thought was _the salad wasn't_ _ **that**_ _good,_ and then the other pieces fell into place in his head, marking the third closest time Carlton Lassiter ever came to committing murder.

* * *

.

His inner sadist was weirdly pleased when Spencer stood up during the wedding to announce he'd found the ring. He'd been occupied trying to figure out how to drag Spencer out and kill him without disrupting the ceremony, but now that it was already disrupted, there was no propriety left to stop him.

He started forward with a hand on his gun and was stopped by an expert shift of O'Hara's weight. O'Hara was quietly radioing the chief, eyes trained on Spencer, and suddenly, in the midst of all the other stupid things happening in the room, Lassiter realized that he didn't know why he'd come in in the first place.

 _Why am I here._ He listened to Spencer count down the clues he'd missed, watching Lacie grow more and more agitated and defensive under the scrutiny. Strangely, Lassiter's saltiest thoughts were for the now-useless character information he'd plugged into his head. Maiden names, middle names, confirmation names, birthdays, who missed what Christmas what year for what reason, who stood up whom in whose prom, who got drunk on Easter and barfed into the basket of eggs. He'd watched the surveillance videos so many times it'd stained his dreams monochrome, and in the end none of it had mattered. _He_ hadn't mattered.

Lacie abruptly bolted, and Lassiter derailed his own train of misery long enough to get her into handcuffs. The action jarred him enough to bring back some agency. He passed Lacie off to the nearest officer, seized Spencer's arm, and steered him directly back to the front desk. He was going to get somebody for something. Impersonation, theft, trespassing, expired license, busted taillight, anything. Anything that would stick. Anything that would wipe the smirk off Spencer's face. "Do you recognize this man?" he demanded.

The men at the desk looked at each other for a long moment, then shrugged, avoiding eye contact with him. Once again Lassiter's world dismantled brick by brick, until the mortar crumbled and the dust swirled between his ears like static.

* * *

.

He let muscle memory take over for the evening. Whiteboard erased, post-its peeled off his monitor, photo evidence organized on the edge of his desk to return to filing, scribbled shorthand notes only he could decipher stacked in a pile next to his mousepad. When everything that could fit into a clasped envelope was sealed away, Lassiter rolled up his sleeves and purposefully let himself go off the rails.

He cleaned his monitor with a microfiber cloth to get the dust off the top and sides, then fetched a damp cloth to clean the screen and a third cloth to dry it before the water could smear. He blew his keyboard clean with a can of air, retaped the straw to the side of the can, set the can sideways in his bottom drawer, and went to work cleaning his mouse. After five minutes of digging still couldn't pry the grime from the groove between the buttons, he fetched a Q-Tip from the medical supply closet and spelunked until the neck of it bent in half. When the mouse gleamed like new, he got out his nail trimmers and cleaned up the fraying fibrous ends of his mousepad, then arranged the mouse so it sat front and center. He tucked the keyboard under the monitor, drew it back out again, straightened it, turned the monitor so it faced forward, and eyeballed the distance between the two until he decided he needed a ruler to make sure it was exact. Once he'd gotten it perfectly perpendicular, he shoved it all to the side so he could polish the wood.

"Okay, enough," Vick interrupted from the door of her office when Lassiter started shaking down a stray custodial cart for wood polish. "This is like watching Rain Man on cocaine. Go home."

"You could close the shades." There was glass cleaner but not wood polish, which made Lassiter question everything the cleaning staff had been doing for the past eleven years. "Or swivel your chair around to face the wall."

"I'm going to excuse that egregious insubordination as evidence that you're exhausted and need sleep," Vick said. "Go home, _now._ Take tomorrow off if you need it. Either way, you're welcome to leave the attitude at home."

Lassiter shoved the rest of the unsorted items into his drawer. His desk was impeccably arranged but that probably wasn't the point. It'd just be piled with new irritants tomorrow morning. He returned the ruler from where he'd stolen it, then came back to the last task of shutting down his computer. The monitor had gone idle as he'd worked, sporting a blue screensaver with a rolling bar of white text.

For the first time in what felt like days, Lassiter slowed to a stop. Professional as she'd been with him at work, Lucinda had made little games of fussing with his computer when he was away from it. Moving icons, changing his screensavers to puppies or floating sprinkled donuts, leaving him coded messages on the scrolling marquee function. The messages would be written using a different code each time, but it'd seldom taken him more than a day or two to puzzle them out. The last challenge she'd left for him had been two days before she'd transferred: a riddle about an egg using basic number substitution with a little arithmetic thrown in.

Looking at the jumble of letters and numbers rolling across his screen, Lassiter honestly couldn't remember if he'd told her the answer. She'd been gone for over a month now and had likely forgotten about it, but it suddenly seemed extremely important. Had he told her in person, or sent an e-mail?

Consumed with an irrational need to see whether or not he'd followed through, Lassiter took a seat and nudged the screensaver away with his mouse. His fingers flew through his e-mail login, and just like that the unopened e-mails he'd been avoiding for the past several weeks unfolded before him. Within a deluge of inter-departmental notifications sat a single personal e-mail: _Re: dinner on Friday._

… that was a problem. Before now, there'd been important and legitimate reasons why he couldn't be expected to give a damn. Now that he was unencumbered and his masochism was knocking full-force against the bastion of his sanity, Lassiter found he'd run out of excuses.

He clicked on it, highlighted and changed the annoying cursive font to Times New Roman size 10, and read it.

 _Carlton,_

 _As I'm sure I mentioned to you, I'm overseas on business and won't be back until next month, making it impossible to have dinner with you on Friday. Considering both that and the disaster that happened last time we decided to have dinner in the same zip code, I'll have to decline._

 _I was sorry to hear about Lucinda's transfer. I was even sorrier when she didn't give me a reason for the transfer. Considering she wasn't formally disciplined and didn't seem happy to leave, and knowing what I know about you, I'm led to a few unflattering conclusions._

 _Carlton, the two years we've spent apart have been two of the happiest, most productive, most enriching years of my life. I've taken up new hobbies, I've traveled, I've made new friends. I'm even trying to publish. I've redefined my own definition of happiness. At first I thought it was the novelty of the separation, of being on my own again and being away from the constant arguments and power struggles, but more and more I've come to the realization that I'm happy because I'm finally living life under my own terms. And while you were occasionally supportive of me during our time together, more often than not you were critical, overbearing, dismissive, and controlling. Knowing what I know about myself now, and knowing how happy I'm capable of feeling when I'm free to do the things I care about, I know I'll never be able to go back and be happy with you again._

 _The moment I realized I felt nothing when I learned about you and Lucinda was the moment I realized there was no point in trying to keep this marriage together anymore. I deserve better, and so do you._

 _I'll be filing a petition for divorce when I come back. As I don't want anything from you, I expect you'll find it easy to agree to the terms. I know this will be difficult for you, but I hope that we can settle this without_

"—Carlton."

Lassiter realized someone had been calling him. He jerked his head up, blinking. O'Hara's hair was coming loose from its braid. She looked tired and disheveled, but her gaze was alert on his. Her jacket was on and her bag was slung over her shoulder. "Aren't you going home?" O'Hara asked.

It took him a second to find sounds. "Huh?"

"Home," O'Hara repeated. "Shouldn't you go home? There's nothing more we can do here. They've already booked her."

Lassiter stared at her a minute longer. O'Hara searched his face, growing visibly more concerned. Before he could react, she lifted her hand was pressed against his forehead. It was cold and smelled like hand sanitizer.

Coming back to himself, Lassiter jerked away and on second thought stood to tower over her. "You mind telling me what you're doing, O'Hara?"

"You completely spaced out." O'Hara didn't look intimidated. He wondered if the day's mayhem had knocked the timidity out of her. "Is there something wrong? You looked like you were reading something really serious-business."

"All of my e-mails are serious business."

"Even the video I sent you of the panda sneezing?"

"It was serious business for the panda," he snapped. "Don't you have somewhere to be?"

"I don't know yet. I can't tell what you're doing," O'Hara said. "I can't tell if this needs… intervention or not? You look terrible. Do you need a ride home? I could drive you if you want."

"I don't need a ride." He exited out of the browser and started the shut-down sequence on the computer. The icons disappeared, leaving the SBPD logo floating by itself on the monitor.

O'Hara was still hovering at his side. "Go away," Lassiter said.

"Are you sure?"

He straightened again and _looked_ at her. This time she got the hint and stepped back.

Files in his briefcase, pens in the outer pocket. His computer wasn't shutting off, so he banged the processor to convince it. "Oh wow, okay," O'Hara said. "Um, good night."

"Good night."

Out of the corner of his eye he saw her hesitate another moment, then turn to leave. Her footsteps were quickly lost in the ever-present hum of activity in the station.

Lassiter was halfway out of the station before he remembered he'd left his coffee in the records room earlier. _For christ's sake._ He was beyond the need to drink it but knew himself well enough to know that an unfinished task would needle him beyond his ability to deal. Frustrated, he retraced his steps, tossed his briefcase on his desk in transit, and stormed downstairs to fetch it.

He ran full tilt into Spencer as he turned the corner. Spencer came back hard on his right leg and it buckled; Lassiter instinctively caught his arm before he went sprawling. "Lassie!" Spencer grinned, recovering quickly. "Fancy running into you here! Hey, great news. I just discovered that the real reason Lacie called off our Friday date was because she had an eye exam, not because she's a scheming murderess worried that I'll blow her cover in a room full of vengeful Catholics. Do you think the government will give her one of those pardons for like two hours? I have a half-eaten jar of olives in my mini-fridge, and I'll never be able to sleep again until I know for sure what she can do with them."

It was testimony to how locked into autopilot he was that he didn't even pause. He didn't let go of Spencer's arm, but his feet kept moving, continuing their earlier trajectory. He vaguely heard Spencer protest, but words were needless alien things and he was on a mission.

The records room ended up being locked for the night. Still holding onto Spencer, Lassiter unearthed his key ring and sorted out the master key one-handed. The door unlocked with a rasp of the deadbolt. He pushed Spencer in before him, then closed the door behind them both. The ancillary lock clicked automatically, and Lassiter slid the bolt into place above it. "Not that this isn't flattering," Spencer said, "but I should probably let you know that Gus has a policy to never let me go into a closet unchaperoned. Or come out of the closet, for that matter. Actually I should probably talk to him about his closet prejudice."

Lassiter replaced his key ring and turned to face him. Shawn was peering around with a vested interest, but obligingly shifted his gaze over when he felt Lassiter's scrutiny. "I want to know how you did it," Lassiter said.

"Did what."

"Solved the case."

"Oh, right, that," Spencer said. "Well, if you must know, it was entirely unscripted. All of my genius is ninety-nine percent organic and one percent foaming agent."

"I'm going to give you one chance to fess up. Tell me, from the _beginning_ , how you worked out the Maxwell case. How you found out about it, what you learned in the interrogation room, all the way up to the wedding itself. And then you're going to fess up to driving up the room service bill. And then you're going to tell me why I shouldn't string you up for obstruction of justice."

"There's a lot of 'ands' in that," Spencer said. "Which one do you want me to subtly sidestep first?"

"One chance. Start talking."

"Sorry to lick the glaze off your Thanksgiving ham, but I never divine and tell." Spencer was already moving towards the door. "If you all feel like you want to pony up for lessons on how to be detectives, my door is always open. I take cash, plastic, and coupons to Red—"

Lassiter barely moved. He grabbed Spencer's shirt by the collar, drawing a yelp when his fingernails dug into the skin underneath, and swung Spencer back towards the center of the room. "Dude, hey, watch the claws," Spencer said. "Are you part chinchilla?"

"Talk."

"I already said I don't share my methods. If you're this stressed out about it, why don't you go back to the scene of the crime and run a simulation or something? Actually do some work for once?"

Lassiter took a step forward. Shawn skittered back. "Come on, man, this is straight-up entrapment," Spencer protested. "Aren't there rules against this?"

"It's not entrapment, you idiot," Lassiter said. "Do you see anyone trying to seduce you?"

"That's debatable," Spencer said. "Also, you've locked me in a filing room. How does that not count as some sort of trap-ment?"

"Tell me how you did it."

"I listened to ancient secrets whispered through a spirit tube comprised solely of bologna. Give it a rest, Lassie, what do you want me to say? You won't buy any of it anyway."

"Tell me how you did it."

"Maybe later. My spirit senses are tied to my stomach. If I try to tell you now, I'm pretty sure all that would come out would be a spicy whiff of enchiladas and cool ranch. This is for your own protection."

Lassiter waited until Spencer was next to him, groping around him for the doorknob, then grabbed his elbow, spun him back around to face the center of the room, and dropped a heel into the back of his right knee.

Spencer went down with a sound Lassiter had never heard from him before – a kind of strangled, agonized grunt, like he'd been punched in the stomach. "Tell me how you did it," Lassiter said, covering a startled flash of unease at the fallout. He hadn't intended for the redirection to be quite so effective. "If you give me the truth now, _all of it,_ I might even consider not booking you for the charge of impersonating an officer."

"What the hell." Spencer was curled on his side, eyes squeezed shut, clutching his knee. His face had lost most of its color, save for an increasingly red stripe across his nose. At first Lassiter thought it was embarrassment, but when Spencer opened his eyes to glare across the floor, Lassiter realized Spencer was flushing out of sheer, uncensored rage. "What the _actual hell, Lassiter?_ "

"Tell me how you did it."

"My effing knee? The knee I injured like two weeks ago? Are you serious?"

"Last chance."

"Or what? You ninja-chop me in a nerve cluster? I've already told you everything I know!"

"You've lied to me from the beginning!"

Shawn shook his head, gritting out another inventive curse against the linoleum. Despite his own anger, Lassiter could admit to being fascinated. He'd witnessed the same break in character in Karen's office during the McCallum case, but this was the first time that temper had emerged from underneath the miles-deep chasm of Spencer's bullshit to target Lassiter specifically. It was very nearly intimidating, except Spencer was on the floor and Lassiter was armed, and there was a part of Lassiter that really needed Spencer to attack him in order to make that justifiable. "From the first interrogation all the way up until now you have straight-up _lied to my face_ ," Lassiter said. "Tell me the truth, Spencer, or I swear to god I'll—"

"I already did, you raging psychopath!" Spencer yelled. "God, I would've been out of your hair in two seconds back then if you'd just let it go. This has always been _your_ problem, not mine!"

" _You're_ my problem, Spencer!"

"No, I'm not! Don't you get it? I didn't _want_ to be your problem! I didn't want to be _anybody's_ problem! I just wanted to help solve a fucking crime before I blew back out of town, is that really so wrong? Why can't you just let it go? What did I ever _do_ to you?"

Lassiter stilled a bit in surprise at the unexpectedly vicious profanity, but his own rage was rising back up from his guilt. _What did I ever do to you._ Name one thing. Name ten. It'd all rolled together in a jumble that stung like an exposed nerve. _What did I ever do to you._

Spencer's eyes were still on him, fists balled up as if he were about to lunge off the floor, and Lassiter realized with a thrill of out-of-body dread that he was about two seconds away from assaulting a civilian. This was rapidly shaping up to be the nadir of his career and he hadn't bothered to pack a flotation device. "You want to know what your real problem is, Lassiter?" Spencer asked, apparently either not sensing or not caring about the rising danger. "You're such a tightass you can't figure out when someone's trying to help you. You can't even trust your own partners. Which, I mean, if we're being serious, is by far the biggest offense here. Do you have a problem with strong women or something? Or just strong women you can't get away with feeling up at work?"

"Stop." His voice was a growl in the back of his throat. "Don't say another word."

"No, _you_ stop," Spencer said. "For god's sake, just park somewhere and use the extra time to get over yourself. I don't owe you anything. I don't owe _you_ , I don't owe my _dad_ , and I don't owe this department jack squat. But you know who I _do_ owe? The woman attached to the most fetching ponytail this side of the San Andreas Fault who has to put up with your bullshit every day of her life."

" _Shut up,_ Spencer!"

"And you want to know what? I _do_ feel bad for what I did. Because maybe if I'd kept my fat mouth shut that day, you'd still be groping your girlfriend in the interrogation room and maybe Jules would've found a partner who actually appreciated her back in Miami."

And Lassiter felt something untether in his brain like a boat snapping off its rope at dock, letting it drift out towards the threat of the undertow.

* * *

.

In the years to come it'd start getting fun to toss Spencer around, because staying in one place for more than two seconds would help the kid get some meat on him. Shoving him would become kind of like wrestling a drunk costumed mascot – a lot of handholds to work with, a lot of fluff, some squawking and flailing and generally satisfying mayhem with no real threat of injury to either party.

Right now Shawn had sharp hipbones and a fat mouth and not much else, and when Lassiter dragged him up by his shirtfront and slammed him upright against the side of a filing cabinet, Spencer hit it so hard the structure nearly tipped over. The loose papers on top poured off and Lassiter was on him before they even reached the floor, standing him upright again with a clang that echoed. He heard himself snarl something that might've been 'tell me the truth' or 'shut the hell up' or maybe it didn't matter because he had both hands fisted in the collar of Spencer's shirt and who knew if Spencer would be able to get anything out around that. It didn't matter. He was going to beat Spencer into a smear and it wouldn't matter, none of it, because Lucinda was gone and his new partnership was a disaster and Karen would never have any respect for him. He was closing in on forty and there was no more time to start over, no more room to take risks and make mistakes, no more energy to break out of the mold he'd carved himself out of.

Two things happened simultaneously even as he prepared to bury the first punch in Spencer's stomach: his phone started ringing, and Spencer's hand shot out so he could steady himself against Lassiter's shoulder.

The action – not retaliation or defense, just a flail for support from the police officer about to assault him– struck Lassiter like cold water. He froze, staring as Spencer gasped with exertion, feeling Spencer's fingers dig into his shoulder as he tried to shift the balance off his right leg. The filing room was already littered with debris, cabinets knocked askew, scattered paper and pencils still rolling across the tile. "You gonna get that?" Spencer panted.

"Huh? Oh." Lassiter moved without thinking. There was a moment of confusion where they both shifted awkwardly; Lassiter kept a stabilizing grip on Spencer's shoulder as he clumsily patted down the wrong pocket ("Lassie, Lassie, it's in your holder, your left—") and he switched hands, prying the phone from its holder and answering it just before the theme looped for the third time. "Lassiter."

" _Hello?_ " O'Hara sounded confused. " _Sorry, am I interrupting something? You sound out of breath._ "

"What do you need?"

" _Well, I don't exactly_ need—" The sound of a horn in the background punctuated her brief pause. " _Never mind. Okay, this is going to seem like it's coming_ completely _out of the blue, and I don't want you to take it the wrong way as in, you know… the way you always take things, but—_ "

"Spit it out, O'Hara."

" _I will, just give me a…_ " Another horn in the background, followed by her sigh. " _Listen, I couldn't stop thinking about how you looked back at the station, and I just… I got to thinking that neither of us has had dinner, and I just passed a Chinese place that I really like, so I was going to turn back and pick up something to eat. I know you like your space after a case, and I don't mean for this to come off creepy or stalkerish or anything, but since we're partners and everything, what would you think of me… maybe swinging by your place on my way home to drop some off? Now, before you say no, it wouldn't be_ dinner _-dinner. Just because we're opposite genders doesn't mean we can't meet in the same place after hours to have a meal. I respect you as a professional and a valued colleague and would never act in a way that would make you feel uncomfortable._ "

"I can assure you I've never once thought of you as a woman," he said. "I've always believed rookie officers should be regarded as sexless arbiters of the law until they've earned the right to call themselves true mistresses of justice."

This time her pause was much, much longer. " _A-anyway,_ " O'Hara said. " _I was just thinking that both of us are probably way too tired to cook, and I can never eat it all myself and Chinese is never as good reheated, you know? Plus I thought maybe we could debrief or go over some of the details for our report tomorrow? Kind of multi-tasking, just to save us some—_ "

"Fine."

A startled pause. " _What?_ "

"It's fine."

" _Really?_ " O'Hara sounded taken-aback. " _Wow, I didn't think it'd be so… I mean, okay, good. Good! Well, I already know where you live, so I guess I'll just… drop by there later? I was going to shower and change first. Oh, right, do you like spicy or not spicy?_ _Because I was thinking—_ "

"You choose."

Again there was a palpably startled pause. " _Okay, well, I guess that's it then,_ " O'Hara said. " _See you later? I guess? Oh, right, I almost forgot to tell you that—_ "

Lassiter hung up and slid the phone back in the holder. "Jules knows where you live?" Spencer asked. "I thought I was going to have to break into the Pentagon of the spirit world to get that info, and here you are just handing it out for free? What gives, man? Why are you playing favorites?"

For a moment everything in the room stood out in stark, beautiful detail: the burnt-orange hue of the walls, the beige cabinets, the black scuffs along the baseboards. There was a dead insect in the flat ceiling light overhead and a half-eaten bagel in the trashcan, and the coffee he'd intended to fetch earlier was still perched on the corner desk. If he closed his eyes he could count every page that had scattered across the floor. He wondered if the ends of all careers looked like this. An empty room, a stack of reports nobody would ever read, and the employee nobody cared about who was leaving it all behind.

He let Spencer go, said, "Close the door on your way out," then walked out of the room, and the hallway, and the main floor, and the station. He didn't bother to take his briefcase.

* * *

.

He didn't recall driving home. He was in his car and then he was inside his house and there was no memory of anything in between. It was dark so he turned on the stove light, and then he stood in the middle of his living room, blinking in the shallow pool of illumination.

He destroyed the Ugo Zaccagnini Majolica owl first by throwing it against the wall by his clock. The sound as it smashed was arrestingly pretty. The pieces had barely finished raining to the carpet before he was throwing the Hagen Renaker Papa Donkey. It missed his sliding patio door by inches and shattered instead into a cloud of dust by his TV stand.

He peeled the 1950's Florence Ceramics Claudia Southern Belle from her bubble wrap and smashed her down against the floor before she'd even left his hand. It stung briefly and the pain was unimportant. Colonial Man circa 1960s exploded against the mantle and Staffordshire circa 1980s flew apart above the hearth, showering pieces down over the card he'd received from Lucinda.

He threw Mid-Century Ceramic Boy and Porcelain Pair Love Doves down the hall and a leg of Florence Ceramics Delia slid under the couch as she burst apart, and he was crunching something underfoot which meant he was still wearing his shoes, which was odd because it was straight-up muscle memory to take them off by the door. Wedding Cake Topper circa 1960s was pounded into pieces against his kitchen table because where else would a birthday cake go, and again there was pain, and again it was unimportant.

He went through Vintage Christmas Caroler and White Sitting Mouse and Calabrisella, and something sharp got his cheek and something ricocheted off his fireplace doors with an ominous clack and then Vintage Lassie Collie was in his hand.

He cocked his arm to throw it, and very suddenly, Lassiter wasn't throwing anything anymore. He stood in the center of the room, chest heaving, cradling the little dog protectively in his hand, awash in the wreckage of the things he loved.

When he remembered how moving worked, he set the collie down very gently on the mantle amidst the shards, righted Lucinda's card, rolled up his sleeves, and got to work cleaning it all up.

He'd just finished sweeping the corpse of Vintage Christmas Caroler into a dustpan when a knock came at his door. Wondering if someone had called the department for the noise disturbance, Lassiter dumped the shards into the trash, checked the locations of his weapons, and strode over to glance out the peephole.

O'Hara was there on his porch, dressed in civvies, looking around at his yard interestedly. As he watched, she turned and beamed at the peephole as though sensing him on the other side.

Lassiter made to unlatch the door, only to discover he hadn't fastened any of his locks. "Hey," O'Hara said when he opened it. "Sorry I'm late. Did I catch you in the middle of something?"

Lassiter stared at her. Seeing his confusion, O'Hara hefted the plastic bag she was holding up to eye level. "Food," she clarified. "I hope you weren't kidding about not minding spicy. I got Mongolian beef for you and I told them to pack on the sauce. I figured you could take it."

Once again Lassiter found himself at that strange mental crossroads where things behind him and things in front of him weren't lining up. Oddly enough, the fact that he'd forgotten to lock his own door was the most jarring thing of all. He'd been triple-checking the locks on his house since he was five years old. "Can I come in?" O'Hara asked, when the silence had stretched long enough to grow awkward.

"Why are you here?"

The smile faded from her face. "What do you mean?"

"Why are you here? Did something happen at the station?"

"Carlton, I asked you earlier if I could swing by with the food."

"No, you didn't."

"Yes, _I did,_ " O'Hara said slowly. "Don't you remember? We talked on the phone. You said you'd be fine with Chinese."

"I did not."

" _Yes you did._ Are you sure you're—" Her gaze swept over him once again, and he watched her recoil with a sudden, horrified gasp. "What happened?"

"What?"

"Oh my god." Before Lassiter could react, her free hand latched onto his wrist, yanking it up to eye level. "Carlton, what's going on? What is this?"

" _Nothing._ " Lassiter irritably jerked it away from her and was about to verbally lay her out for this entire stupid barrage of dumbassery when he saw streaks of blood on her fingertips. "Why are you bleeding?"

"I'm not bleeding, _you are_. Oh my god, your house."

"O'Hara—" but she was already dropping the bag of food and shoving past him, hand snaking into her jacket for her firearm. "O'Hara, what the hell are you doing?"

"Fall back," she ordered tersely. "I'm going to see if the compound's secure. Call for backup. Do you have your phone? Are you able to dial?"

"It's not—"

"Use mine." O'Hara dug into her pocket and thwapped her phone against his chest hard enough to make him bark out a lungful of air. "Chief Vick should still be at the station. Just press nine, she's on speed dial."

"O' _Hara._ " Lassiter finally managed to snatch a hold of her wrist and jerk her back before she went full Steven Seagal against the monsters in his closets. "For Christ's sake, would you listen to me for two seconds? The place is secure. It wasn't a break-in. Why would I answer the door if I were actively engaging trespassers?"

O'Hara was frozen in his grip. "Because they made you answer it?"

"What makes you think they'd still be alive enough to make me do anything? Give me a break, O'Hara. I'm more in danger with you waving that thing around than I'd ever be with robbers in my house. Geez Louise."

O'Hara finally lowered her weapon, but slowly. The off-kilter combination of the porch light and the stove light was bathing her in strange contrasts, sinking half her face in shadow. "If it wasn't a break-in, why is everything trashed?"

"I did it myself. Don't worry about it."

O'Hara looked at him. _Really_ looked at him. "And if you're going to barge in here, at least take off your shoes," Lassiter added, because it was his right to be hypocritical as hell on his own property. "I just had the carpet cleaned."

O'Hara didn't answer for a good ten seconds more. When she finally moved to reholster her weapon, he saw a bloody handprint on the fabric over her wrist. "You really don't remember me calling you?" she pressed, watching him closely.

"No. Why? What are you talking about?"

O'Hara's mouth flattened into a razor-thin line. She kicked off her shoes – sturdy Oxfords, no frills – and reached down to rescue the food bag. She shut the door behind her and made brisk work of the locks.

Before Lassiter could ask any more questions, she turned, took him by the elbow, and steered him firmly across the room. "Is this the way to your bathroom?" she asked.

He stumbled when she barked his hip on the kitchen divide. "What?"

"Down the hall. Is this the way to the bathroom?"

"Yes, but we're not—" But O'Hara dropped off the bag on the kitchen table as they passed it and kept right on going, yanking him along. The hallway was shrouded in gloom.

She didn't hesitate, barging in on one door and then another until she found the right one. "Okay, _look_ ," Lassiter began.

"Sit down," O'Hara said. She hit the light and pushed him bodily down onto the toilet seat when he didn't obey fast enough. "Where's your medical kit?"

"I don't need—"

"Where is your medical kit?"

"It's under the—" but she didn't wait for this either, already on her knees to rummage carelessly through the cabinet under his sink.

A little dumbfounded, not sure what sudden and uncharacteristic wrath he'd inspire if he got up, Lassiter kept his ass on the toilet seat and watched her bulldoze through his supplies. She tossed the six year-old bottle of aloe and mostly-empty bottle of tub cleaner over her shoulder before she came across the medical kit in the back. When she dragged it out, it was rough enough that the battered white metal made a banshee shriek against the wood. "Here," she ordered, whipping his hand towel off the rack by the sink. "Squeeze this."

Too confused not to obey, Lassiter squeezed. The action stung with surprising intensity. _What,_ he thought, and then his body suddenly rebelled against his daze and informed him in rapid succession what else hurt: his cheek and his chin, his knuckles, his knees. "This thing looks like something out of my grandparents' attic," O'Hara said. "Even the peroxide is all dried up. How do you not have viable medical supplies in your house?"

"There's nothing wrong with the ones in there."

"I think I gave myself tetanus just opening up the lid." O'Hara opened the doors to the mirrored cabinet above his sink. She emerged a half a minute later with a more recent bottle of rubbing alcohol. "What were you breaking? I thought I saw ceramics."

"They're figurines."

"You collect figurines?"

"My wife does."

"You broke your wife's figurines?"

"Why do you assume they're hers? I ordered them for me."

He was startled to realize that he recognized the expression O'Hara gave him then. She actually pulled it out a lot during their conversations: the furrowed brow and the off-center quirk to her lips, like she was trying to figure out whether or not she liked the taste of something. Before now he'd thought it was her way of concentrating on his worldly advice, but now that he was seeing it in real-time, he realized he'd mistranslated. It was straight-up irritation. And not just any irritation: irritation that he himself was personally causing her. "I don't know how much I can do here," O'Hara said. "There could be fragments. We should really go to an emergency room."

He forced himself to focus. "There aren't."

"A minute ago you didn't even know your hands were bleeding."

"Well now I do. And I know there aren't any fragments."

Out came the expression again. She snagged his hands, a little rougher than before, and pushed them into the towel before getting to work sifting through the supplies in the kit.

He watched her until the sight of her stained sleeves reminded him. "Sorry."

O'Hara froze, hand on the package of antiseptic wipes. "For your jacket," Lassiter said. "Leave it here and I'll get it cleaned."

"Did you just _apologize_ to me?"

"What? No. I said I was sorry about your jacket."

"Right," she said. "That's called an apology."

"I'm not saying _I'm_ sorry, I'm telling you I'm sorry for the state of your jacket. Leave it here. I'll get it cleaned."

O'Hara looked at him a moment more. "I don't care about the jacket, Carlton."

Really? His system was clean but she couldn't possibly know that. It was unhygienic at best and dangerous at worst. "At least put the gloves on."

"I literally have your blood on my hands right now."

"Then wash your hands and put some gloves on. What are you, six?"

O'Hara lurched upwards. She washed her hands viciously in his sink for exactly fifteen seconds, then swiped his remaining hand towel off the rack and threw it out into the hallway. "At least put it in the hamper," Lassiter said.

" _Shut up_."

Utterly astonished, Lassiter closed his mouth. O'Hara paused just long enough to snap on a pair of latex gloves before continuing to leaf through the supplies. She unearthed the Q-Tips, a mostly-empty tube of Neosporin, and a pair of tweezers before pushing the entire kit aside with her knee. Once again she took his hands away from the towel, turning them over so the back of his wrists rested atop his knees.

He hadn't intended to look, but a quick glance revealed to him the extent of the scratch damage. There were a multitude of tiny cuts on the insides of the fingers on his left hand, a collection of longer, if shallower, slices across the palm of his right. Both hands were smeared with blood, but from the feel of it most of the cuts had stopped actively bleeding. The back of his hand in the meantime throbbed with a deeper ache; when he tilted it a little to examine it, he saw the first shadow of a bruise blossoming over the knuckles.

O'Hara tore open one of the antiseptic wipe packages and shook the tiny square out to its full size. It was mostly dehydrated. She solved the problem by tipping some of the rubbing alcohol onto it, squeezing a little to distribute it. Her hands were quick and steady, like it was old-hat to be applying first-aid in a man's bathroom after forging through an ocean of dead ceramic figurines.

Lassiter tried to start a conversation several times and ultimately failed. She'd already answered the question of 'what the hell', which was food. The answer to 'why the hell' was predicated on a phone conversation he only vaguely remembered having. She also knew where he lived, which was… had he actually ever told her that? He was fairly sure he hadn't, but then again his memory was apparently malfunctioning. Who knew what else he'd already given away for free.

Distracted, Lassiter flinched with a poorly-muffled yelp as O'Hara applied the alcohol-soaked square to the first of the cuts on his palm. She froze a moment, then relaxed with a wry look. "This may sting a little."

"Just get on with it," he snapped. He could feel his ears burning.

"Are you sure? I can blow on them like my Mom used to do with my cuts."

"I swear to god, O'Hara—"

"There _is_ a shard," O'Hara muttered to herself, ignoring him, intent on the damage. She swiped the tweezers, toweled them off quickly with the wipe, and rooted around for a bit while he squirmed and tried not to curse. "I got it, but I have no proof that there aren't more," O'Hara reported, returning the alcohol pad to his palm. "I really think you should go to an ER to make sure."

"Quit being dramatic. They're barely papercuts."

" _I'm_ dramatic," she echoed, deadpan.

"Look, I never asked you to barge in here. I had everything under—"

She took the bottle of alcohol and upturned it onto the cuts. It hurt like a son of a bitch. _God._ He couldn't figure out if he was in less or more trouble here than he would've been with Lucinda. In a way the two really weren't at all comparable. Had it been Lucinda on the other side of the door, it would've taken a lot more than reason to get her to stop from tearing apart the house for a phantom culprit. He'd seen her prevent a gunshot victim from bleeding out with one hand as she barked at the incoming paramedics on her cell with the other, but the sight of his blood in particular had always rattled something loose in her. In this case, Lucinda would have most likely paced around like a tiger and yelling at him while he dressed his own wounds. "Shawn was right," O'Hara muttered, again almost to herself. "It's one thing when you're on a case, but you really don't handle personal stress well at all. I _knew_ I shouldn't have left you at the station by yourself."

He'd been prepared to defend his own incredible emotional maturity, but the mention of Spencer drained the blood from his face. Lassiter swallowed down the flood of words, trying to figure out how much she knew. She was irritated but being more or less gentle with him, which didn't seem like the right reaction for someone about to book him on an assault charge.

He waited until she'd thrown away the first square, rewet another, and returned to the cuts on his other hand before asking, "So he called you?"

O'Hara made a vague, questioning noise. Her brow furrowed as she addressed the largest cut across his palm. "Sorry, what?" she asked after a moment.

"He called you, then?"

"Who called me?"

"Spencer."

"About what? What are you talking about?"

Confused, Lassiter watched her. Appearing satisfied, O'Hara threw the bloodied wipe into the trash and took his hands in hers, flattening them out so she could examine them one last time. "Look, I don't know what you're referring to, but Shawn does _not_ have my number," O'Hara said. "I'm not a masochist."

That surprised him. "I was under the impression that you liked him."

"I like him a lot. Not like that," she said quickly, seeing the expression on his face. "It's just that he can talk his way through a coma. I dated a guy like that once, and he'd call me up at like two in the morning to talk about the most random things, and while that can be cute for a while it gets old _really_ fast. Plus Shawn seems like the type to shop around and I'm really busy with my career, so I really don't have the time to… um, you know, never mind. Why? Why would he call me? What's going on?"

Lassiter was suddenly hit with a wave of crippling exhaustion. He watched her uncap the Neosporin and squeeze it over the soft head of a Q-Tip. He didn't move as she began the process of dabbing the gel onto every one of his cuts, switching to the other end when one got too frayed, cradling his big hand in her own like his was an injured bird. "I attacked him," he said.

The Q-Tip stilled. Lassiter realized belatedly that he'd spoken out loud. When he looked up, O'Hara's eyes were wide on his. "In the records room," he said. "It was assault. He'll probably press charges."

"Wait a second." Her eyes darted over his face. "Are you saying you _hit him_?"

"Threw him around."

"In the records room? When?"

"Hour ago. Maybe two."

"Was he fighting back?"

"Would it matter?"

"It…" She stopped, pressing her lips together hard.

With a vague, disembodied interest, Lassiter wondered what she'd do. She had a big heart for lost causes but was possibly even more attached to the exact letter of the law than he was. This was all assuming, of course, that Spencer hadn't immediately gone to Vick after Lassiter had left. Any moment now he might be called in, and the months-long litigation and public evisceration would begin with or without O'Hara in attendance. He vaguely hoped he'd have time to eat first.

O'Hara said, "How could you let him get to you like that?"

The unexpected reaction made him blink at her. "I mean, he can be irritating, sure, but you already knew he's actively trying to troll you," O'Hara said. "How could you let him get so far under your skin?"

"Get under my—" He could hardly believe his ears. "O'Hara, I attacked a civilian! This isn't some kind of… of poker game I lost because I didn't pack my game face today. _I broke the law._ "

"Maybe," she said heavily, and _there_ it was: that prim little academy girl who knew the codes up down and sideways, who could quote them to him over bagels and high speed chases and in stakeouts so boring it was all he could do to keep from digging his eyeballs out with his car keys. "But you can't say this was the first time you've manhandled him. I don't even think it's the fifth."

"That was different. He was under arrest for murder."

"Yeah, like, once," she said. "But not any of the other times. Did you actually _hit_ him, or did you just kind of toss him up against something like you usually do? I don't know. The two of you are weirdly… physical. I've just learned to kind of roll with it."

"I'm not physical _._ "

"You are, though. You really, really are," O'Hara said. "Not ever with women, but you're pretty rough with men. Chief Vick never calls you on it, so I figured it was some sort of… Santa Barbara thing. But you've definitely thrown Shawn around before where others can see."

Had he? He sat still, puzzled and nauseated, feeling himself sway for a while in the bright lights. "It makes sense, though, now that I think about it," O'Hara said. "You sounded really off when I called. Why didn't you tell me what was going on?"

"I don't know."

"Or afterwards? I would've helped you."

"I don't know."

O'Hara continued to watch him, a peculiar, pained expression on her face. "I'm sorry," he said, because she seemed to need something.

The bathroom was silent a while. Lassiter wondered if they should put the Chinese in the oven to keep it warm. Would she want to eat with him now? He kind of hoped so and kind of hoped she never wanted to see him again. Either would solve pressing concerns.

After a long time, O'Hara let out a slow breath. She silently turned her attention back to his hands, meticulously smoothing ointment on the last of the tiny cuts before throwing the Q-Tip away. She unwrapped a square of gauze, neatly centered it over his palm, and taped it down. "I'll see what I can do about getting you a recommendation," Lassiter said. "When they transfer you. Your credentials are good – you should find placement within the week."

"They're not going to transfer me."

"Don't be naïve. Ten to one he ran straight to Vick after I left. I'm just lucky she hasn't stormed the place with imperial guards yet."

"He's not going to turn you in," O'Hara said. "Honestly, he's probably already forgotten about it. The only one caught up over it is you."

Lassiter thought of the volcanic anger that'd distorted Spencer's voice after he'd been dropped to the floor. Until that moment, Lassiter had failed to see any resemblance between him and Henry. It'd taken helplessness and rage to draw the similarities. "Not this time."

"The only reason it feels any different to you is because this entire day was piloted on nightmare fuel," O'Hara said. "You're thinking too hard about this, Carlton. I promise. I mean… yes, I wish you two wouldn't go at it so much, and I don't think you should be manhandling him so much, but I don't believe you two did anything worse to each other than you usually do. I know you better than that."

"I took this job I took an oath to protect the innocent and uphold the law. I have to take responsibility."

"So you hurt yourself to make up for it," she said.

No, he— but also, _no._ This wasn't the way he intended to let this conversation to go. He didn't deserve the bastion of that pity. He'd gone off the deep end willingly and had splashed around until his anger had drowned, and any collateral damage had been the consequence, not the goal. "Listen, Carlton, what you did was wrong and I'm not going to pretend it wasn't," O'Hara said. "But you have to look at the context, and you have to look at mitigating factors. _You're_ the one who always tells me that details matter. I know for an absolute fact that Shawn didn't go to Vick tonight, and I also know that if _you_ try to do it, he's going to deny anything happened."

"That's his prerogative."

"If you're doing it to save face, you're only going to lose it. If you're doing it to try and right your wrong – why not talk to _him?_ Apologize to him? Let him decide how to proceed. Put the power in his hands, and let him judge your actions."

"Who the hell cares what he thinks?"

O'Hara just looked at him. "Stop trying to justify weaseling out of it," Lassiter said. "That's not how I work, O'Hara. Spencer isn't a judge and a jury. If I broke the law, I deserve to be tried for it."

"You're right, he's not a jury. He's the wronged party," she said. "And if you exchange more than two insults a day with him, I think you'll figure out that getting rid of you isn't his goal. In fact, I can guarantee it's the exact opposite."

"Right, I forget how much of a character expert you are. Mind sharing your evidence with me, or is that classified too?"

O'Hara finally hesitated. Considering her calm authority up to this point, the suddenly silence was extremely telltale. "What?" he said, suspicious.

"It's nothing."

"And I'm Marie-Louise of Austria," Lassiter said. "Spit it out What do you know?"

"I just…" O'Hara licked her lower lip for a bit, then sighed. "Look, don't you see how much fun he's having? How it's all just a big game to him?"

"So? He's an idiot. This isn't news."

O'Hara sat back on her heels at last and stripped off the gloves, dropping them inside-out into the trash. Agitatedly, compulsively, she began setting the materials back into the kit exactly how she'd found them. "Listen, I know you don't like him," she said. "But he's smart _,_ Carlton. I mean reallysmart."

"The man flails around the station like a coked-up Kermit. Again, what evidence are you quoting?"

"I'm not talking about him being psychic or not. I'm saying that he's _smart._ Our profilers say his IQ is off the charts."

 _Our profilers._ Lassiter understood in an instant, and the pain from his hands suddenly seemed inconsequential again. "It's not that you're a game," O'Hara said. "I'm saying that to someone as smart as Shawn, this whole _thing_ is a game. Everything. Every part of it. Chasing criminals, solving crimes, even putting his life in danger. It's not like it is for us, where it's a duty or a calling. It's _fun_ for him. It challenges him where nothing else can. It's not even going to occur to him to report you, because he likes that _you_ challenge him."

Lassiter felt strange. It sounded a lot like O'Hara was implying that Spencer solved unsolvable cases merely to fuck with him, but that way of thinking would lead him straight back out over the deep end.

Instead he concentrated on the thing that hurt more. "You set the profilers on him without telling me?"

Strangely, O'Hara looked like she wanted to cry. The vulnerability was just as disconcerting as her ball-buster persona from earlier. "Yes," she said. "I'm sorry."

He said nothing. "I wanted to know why he was bothering you so much," O'Hara said. "I figured you were on him because you suspected him for something. So I trusted your hunch and tried to gather some information from the inside. But they couldn't give me anything except to say that he was here because he wanted to be. I didn't think that would help you, so I didn't say anything."

Lassiter leaned his head against the wall. He was tired. "Please say something," O'Hara said.

"I give up," he said.

She tensed. "What do you mean, you give up?"

He was surprised to feel almost relaxed. He'd smashed hundreds of dollars of antique ceramics but he didn't have to cook tonight, so the evening was an even mix of fair and foul. He'd be able to live off Lucinda's cookies for at least two more weeks while he searched for a new job. Something menial and forgettable like lawn-mowing or dog-walking. "What do you mean, you _give up?_ " O'Hara repeated, voice rising a little. "Carlton, talk to me."

"You're right. I'm a toy and he's a genius and the whole, wide world's a game. Tell you what," Lassiter said. "You take the lead on the investigations from now on. Because clearly, I'm just not with it anymore. You're so busy running around behind my back whenever I'm trying to run a straight operation, you might as well just do it out in the open. So by all means, take the lead. Take everything. Hey, you know what? I'll even throw in my desk. Solid oak. Take that. And my computer, I won't be needing that."

O'Hara looked horrified. "I have a gun at the bottom of my dirty clothes hamper," Lassiter offered. "Why don't you take it as a souvenir? Wait, wait." He patted around for his phone. "Can you call my wife? I'm sure she'll give you everything you need. Take her too. I'm not using her anymore."

"Are you having a breakdown?" she blurted.

Yes. No? "From now on, outsource all you want, O'Hara. Just climb right up the ladder without me."

"Carlton, this is crazy. Just wait a minute and I can—"

"Do you like cookies? I have cookies. Take all the cookies. You can bring them to the celebratory potluck they throw at work after I leave."

" _Carlton—_ "

"Who knows, maybe your new partner will have a death wish and let you drive. Just make sure they signal ahead to clear the roadways so there aren't any civilian lives lost in the—"

She slapped him. The impact didn't knock words out of his mouth as much as the sight of her did just then: her hair escaping its tie and drifting around her face, her cheeks flushed with anger. Lassiter wondered what was up with his karma that he kept getting thrown together with beautiful women he wasn't allowed to touch. Life loved teaching you little lessons that hurt like hell. Touch, suffer. Don't touch, and wonder why it still hurt.

Then he was in her arms, pressed against her chest, and he forgot about it in favor of leaning into the warmth. Her chest was jumping a little like she was crying, but her grip was strong and stabilizing. "Don't," O'Hara said somewhere above him, sounding a little choked, "say that to me ever again."

It was hard to talk against the pressure . "Say what."

"Everything you just said. I mean it. Never again."

"Let go."

"No," she said, and now she was almost laughing, frustrated past the point of anger and right into hysteria. "You know what? I give up too. I can't figure you out. I have tried _everything_ to show you I want to be here. I don't know what else to do."

O'Hara pulled back and pressed her hands to the sides of his head, cradling it. It was bizarre how intimate it wasn't. He tried to compare the feeling and came up with only vague memories as a very young child: his mother's hands over his ears during a loud fireworks display, shielding him from stimulus, holding his anxiety back by sheer force. "We're _partners,_ " O'Hara said. "You're not a stepping stone, I'm not looking for advancement, and what we do isn't a game. When I saw your record, you have no idea what went through my head. All the cases you worked, all the things you'd seen? I thought, ' _This_ is someone who won't take it easy on me. This is someone who'll make me tougher.' I knew you wouldn't pull any punches, but it was okay, because that was what I _wanted._ It's always been what I've wanted, and you were the first one to give it to me."

He stared at her. "You wanted _this._ "

"Yes."

"To work with a pregnant interim chief, a crackpot off his meds, and his bald tap-dancing sidekick?"

"Yes," she said, and now she actually was laughing, and _christ_ there were tears in her eyes. "Yes. To all of that."

"You wanted to work with me?"

" _Yes._ "

"They didn't throw you in here?"

"Carlton, you're the best the department has to offer. One of the best in the state. How could I not want to be here?"

There was an immensity to what she was saying that he could barely wrap his brain around. Lassiter sat there stupidly. He could have easily killed himself for the next thing that came out of his mouth, which was, "But Spencer—"

"I'm sorry for always investigating behind your back, but I mean, if we're going to be fair, you kind of forced me to. I tried to talk to you but you never seemed to want to hear what I had to say. So I did my own research so I could be ready to fill in the gaps. I would've told you if you'd asked. You just never wanted to hear it."

"So this is _my_ fault?"

"Kind of," Juliet O'Hara said, and smiled tentatively.

Lassiter opened his mouth to yell, then stopped, realizing there was nothing to say. If her words hadn't knocked it out of him, her expression would have. "I'll check in more," O'Hara said. "I'll tell you what I'm looking up. I'll see if it's okay with you before I bring him in, and we can decide as a team. Okay? But I mean, if you won't listen to me, I can't do anything. But I have your back. _Always._ I just… need to know you have mine too. That's all. It's all I want."

Lassiter sat on the lid of his toilet for a long time, hands hurting, ass protesting the unyielding plastic, and thought about how fucked up his house was. There was shrapnel and dust and probably blood everywhere. He'd cleaned up some in the dark but it'd be infinitely worse in daylight. The carpet would require steam cleaning or possible replacement and the walls might need to be painted, which meant strange people under his roof. He'd need to hide everything valuable, which would be easy, considering most of the pricier things in his house were currently lying in pieces all over his carpet.

His partner was still kneeling before him, his blood on her jacket, not caring that his blood was on her jacket. He expected to see Lucinda when he looked at her, but all he saw were bright eyes and mounds of impractical hair and an open, expectant face. It made him tired to look at her. He knew she needed him to say something, but he'd already forgotten what it was.

He licked his lips and said, "O'Hara."

"Yes?"

… maybe he could paint his own walls. It'd be a bitch tearing up carpet by himself though, which meant he still needed to prep his house and his hands hurt too much for that. He could live with it for a while.

He opened his mouth to say something important, but all that came out was, "I'm hungry."

An expression came over her face that he would've paid in blood never to see again. It was reminiscent of Lucinda's but opened up a new, infinite number of past and future hurts.

She reached up and took a hold of his wrist, just above the bandages, and just this once, just this once and no other time ever, he let her. "Okay," she said, and that was that. Which didn't feel momentous, but in all likelihood probably was.


	4. Chapter 4

He dosed up on painkillers and rolled into the station sixteen minutes late the next morning. He immediately exacerbated his tardiness by making a beeline for the less-visited bathrooms near the custodial closets, locking it behind him. Last night's peppers came out like a foul wave from the abyss. Lassiter was quickly inundated with a laundry list of regrets as he alternated between hasty flushings and the despair of having forgotten to pry open the window before subjecting himself to his own poor life choices.

After five minutes of trying to wipe with mummified hands, Lassiter gave up and peeled the bandages off. The deepest marks were still an angry red but seemed to be in no immediate danger of separating, so he decided to let them air out for now and apply some Vaseline to them later.

When he'd stalled as much as his pride would allow, he straightened himself up in the mirror and went to confront his fate.

The journey back to his desk didn't necessitate a trip past Vick's office, but he detoured anyway, not wanting to sink in another day's work if he was just going to be fired by the end of it. Sure enough there was movement behind the glass as he passed; a moment later the door opened and Vick poked her head out after him. "Pleased to see you up and bushy-tailed, Detective," she said. "Step into my office for a moment, if you please."

Lassiter did, taking a glance back towards Juliet's station that he wasn't particularly proud of. It was empty but she hadn't called in, which meant she'd either suffered a flat or had faced a similar fried-dumpling crisis in the bathroom that morning. Vick for her part didn't stand on ceremony, closing the door behind them and immediately shuffling back to her pregnancy chair, sinking down into it with a poorly-suppressed sigh. "Take a seat, Lassiter."

Wanting to take what was coming to him on his own two feet, Lassiter folded his arms over his chest and waited. Vick spent a small eternity situating herself, shoving stacks of files over to the side and clearing away the paperweights that stood between them. When she'd organized the space to her satisfaction and looked back up at him, her eyebrows shot up at the sight of his defensive posture. "Barring yourself for a siege?"

"Am I?"

"I don't know. Are you?"

What? Confused, Lassiter said nothing. "Lassiter, just take a seat," Vick said. "You put a crick in my neck when we're both standing, never mind when I'm sitting."

"If it's all the same to you, I'd rather stand."

"It's not the same to me, and while we're at it, I distinctly remember giving you a gentle suggestion to leave the attitude at home. How about we not test my mercy this morning?"

Lassiter sullenly unfolded his arms and lowered himself into the chair.

Vick spent a last moment replacing her pens in her top drawer, then folded her hands together and looked at him over the top of them.

Lassiter tried not to fidget. He'd busted hard-as-nails criminals – arsonists, rapists, even serial killers – but there was something about Vick's steely gaze that brought out the Catholic schoolboy in him. He wished she'd just get to the part where she fired him, instead of dragging it out long enough for Juliet to have time to crash in with an impassioned, humiliating speech in his defense. Knowing her, she'd probably already drafted at least four.

He was about to offer to just walk himself out to spare them both when Vick said abruptly, "I'd like to commend you, Detective."

Lassiter's head shot up so quickly his neck cricked. "This last case was…" Vick sighed, seeming to rethink her approach. "To be honest with you, I have no idea how we pulled that off. We had no leads, an enormous pool of suspects, and were expected to close it in a frankly unrealistic time frame. By all rights we should have failed. Instead you not only managed to keep the entire ordeal under wraps and away from the media, you successfully narrowed down an uncooperative pool of suspects enough for our team to close the case before the ring left the state. If it hadn't been for your investigative—"

Lassiter blurted, "What are you talking about?"

Vick seemed equally taken aback. "I see this comes as a shock to you," she said dryly, recovering. "You _were_ aware that the case was solved, right?"

"Well, sure, but—"

"So why the sudden crisis of modesty?"

Was this a test? Lassiter experienced a moment of paralyzing confusion. "Spencer was the one who solved the case. I may have made the arrest, but I didn't close it."

"Is thatwhat this is about?" Vick's eyebrows were nearly at her hairline. "Lassiter, I don't expect anyonein this department to close a case by themselves. Part of being a good detective is knowing when and how to utilize your resources. Shawn's visions did prove useful in apprehending the suspect, but the groundwork you laid made it possible for him to get as far as he did."

He distantly found himself wondering if he'd fallen asleep on the toilet last night and was suffering fried-dumpling delusions. "You want to commend _me?_ " he pressed, just to make sure.

"Yes."

"On the job _I_ did?"

Vick watched him for what seemed like a very long time. "Yes."

Lassiter sank back in his chair slowly. "Carlton, I think you need to take the day off," Vick said, stirring at last and reaching for the phone. "I'm going to have Buzz drive you home, and we can assess your condition tomorrow."

He snapped to attention. His hand shot out purely on instinct, clapping the receiver back down into the cradle, and the expressionless look Vick gave him then raised the hairs on the back of his neck. "Look, Chief, I don't know what this is about, but I didn't do anything," Lassiter said, just to go for broke. "I set up the interrogations, sure, and I ran dossiers and simulations, but those are just bones. I didn't prove the missing link. My actions aren't worthy of commendation."

"First of all, _I'm_ the judge of those types of things, not you, thank god," Vick said, still coolly. "Second of all, that groundwork _is_ what proves the missing link. Without it, hunches are just speculation, and psychic visions don't hold water in court. We needed every scrap of evidence you and Shawn collected, _together,_ in order to close this case to the satisfaction of a prosecutor."

He couldn't believe he was arguing his good fortune but he was convinced there was a second shoe about to drop. " I shouldn't be commended for a job half-finished."

"Again, that's the beauty of working with a team, Detective," Vick said, and smiled for the first time that morning, brisk and businesslike. "The ability to pass the baton to your fellow investigators in order to reach the finish line. However unorthodox – or, frankly, insane – it all seems, we appear to have stumbled upon a combination that delivers results."

Lassiter was a little dazed. He was still mostly expecting to be fired.

"I'll be placing an official letter of recommendation in both yours and Detective O'Hara's personnel file." Vick moved again, this time to move the earlier stack of papers back in front of her. Apparently the meeting was over. "The mayor also requested that I personally forward her thanks to you for your discreet handling of the case."

"And Spencer?"

"Will be paid for his time. As always."

It took absolutely everything in him to say, "And the records room?"

Vick's gaze flickered up at him over the paperwork, brows coming together as she fished around her for a pen. "What about the records room?"

Lassiter felt his heart hammering in his fingertips. He realized he was clenching his fists atop his knees and made the effort to loosen them, restoring the circulation. "Never mind."

"I still think you should go home and rest, but I won't force the point," Vick said. "Don't overdo it today. You're dismissed."

He got up unsteadily.

"One last thing," Vick said.

He paused to blink at her. "O'Hara's first evaluation for her probationary period will be coming up in a few weeks," Vick said. "I'm going to need a full report from you on her progress to help determine if she's a good fit for the department. I'll send you an e-mail to remind you of the due date for the paperwork."

"Why? That's not up to me."

"It might be," Vick said simply.

He felt another unpleasant tingle on the back of his neck. "You're dismissed," Vick said again, and without ceremony was back to her paperwork, pen tapping the desktop with staccato punctuation.

* * *

.

Juliet came in soon after with a pinched expression he recognized from the mirror that morning. "I'm here, I'm sorry, I'm here," she said breathlessly, tossing her bag onto the floor by her desk. "Totally my fault. No excuses."

"Punctuality is key, O'Hara," Lassiter said, hypocritical as hell as he surreptitiously booted up his own computer. "A perp isn't going to wait around for you to wash your hair, you know."

"I know, I know." Her face was shiny with sweat. She threw herself into her chair and went through the quick, expert motions of retying her disheveled hair, twisting it up into a girlish ponytail that Lassiter instantly loathed.

The computer bitched at him for the rough shutoff the night before but loaded without corruption. Within the minute the desktop was up and running, laying out his to-do list for the day on a backdrop of SBPD blue.

Lassiter felt restless. He found a pen and flipped it between his fingers, back and forth and around the index, and stole a look over at Juliet. Juliet had just grabbed a tissue from the box on the corner of her desk and was now lightly patting her face, trying to dab the sweat off without smearing her makeup.

Lassiter had a brief moment to wonder if this was how normal people felt at work. He was fairly certain he'd brandished all the jagged edges of himself at his partner last night, but Juliet didn't seem to be in need of a rehash, utterly focused on structural repairs. She hadn't seemed to have minded him bleeding all over her either, so apologies for her dry-cleaning bill seemed similarly beside the point. The entire ordeal had taken on a hazy veneer usually reserved for his fever dreams. Mostly he remembered them sitting on the floor of his living room afterwards and stuffing their faces with congealed Chinese food until their bloated stomachs became the sole source of regret in the world.

Still, it was probably his job to say something first. He opened his mouth, but as always Juliet beat him to it, still dabbing her face in her pocket mirror as she spoke. "Was traffic bad for you? Everything seemed like it was out to get me this morning."

"What?" He was startled. "The commute was fine."

"Really? You must have found a pocket of _really_ good karma."

"I thought you said you weren't going to offer excuses."

"I'm not. I'm just saying, on _top_ of everything else, the traffic was really heinous. But if it wasn't for you, I'm glad. " Evidently finished cleaning herself up, O'Hara balled up the tissue and tossed it into the trash.

Lassiter wondered if he should offer something else. The conversation so far was boring, but that wasn't so much Juliet's fault as the fact that he wasn't a person who performed well at small talk. For the second time that morning he opened his mouth to try again, but Vick poked her head out of her office again, zeroing in on Juliet. "O'Hara, if you could spare a minute."

In the process of replacing her pocket mirror in her purse, Juliet shot Lassiter a wide-eyed look. Lassiter shook his head at her surreptitiously, and her alarmed gaze eased a bit. She pushed herself out of her seat, patting her hair by her ears, and followed Vick into her office.

Out from under the glare of Juliet's presence, Lassiter finally arrived at some semblance of productivity. He managed to answer two more e-mails before motion towards him brought his attention up. Officer Bronski was taking a detour past his desk, coffee in one hand and a sealed folder in the other. "Delivery from downstairs," Bronski said without preamble, clapping it down on Lassiter's desk as he passed.

"Appreciate it," Lassiter said, already checking the label. Pleased, he dropped everything else to attend to it.

Juliet floated from Vick's office a moment later, an expression of giddy disbelief on her face. She beamed at him the entire way, settling in her chair with the poise of a fairy queen. "Don't let it go to your head," Lassiter warned.

"I won't," Juliet said, but when she turned to her monitor she was still grinning goofily, color high in her cheeks.

Lassiter worked a thumb under the flap of the folder and tore it open, sliding out the report to read it.

. . .

 **SBPD LABS**

 _ **Toxicology Report**_

 _ **Workorder:08095567**_

 _ **Test 09-563: Item Analysis**_

Test Summary: Subject consisted of three items. Item 1 contained 71 grams of muffin. Item 2 included in totality of Item 1, consisted of 14 small blueberries accounting for 8% of total weight. Item 3 contained paper wrapper used to hold Item 1. (See the Summary Report for additional comments and information.)

 _Identification:_

Item 1: Delicious Muffin

 _Identification Methods: Color, Microscope_

 _Other: Tastebuds_

Item 2: Blueberries

 _Identification Methods: Color, Microscope, Produce Experience_

Item 3: Muffin Wrapper

 _Identification Methods: Color, Logo_

 _Consensus Results:_

 _Item 1: Controlled Substance(s): None_

 _Item 2: Controlled Substance(s): None_

 _Item 3: Controlled Substance(s): None_

 _Summary Report:_

 _Thanks for the muffin from D'Angelo's. Your partner brought these in a while ago and they really stick to your ribs. Next time try thanking her for the free food instead of tying up resources in the labs._

 _. . ._

Lassiter saw red. He stood the hell up and was about to go down to ream them all for their unprofessionalism when he discovered the legitimate report lying underneath, outlining the proper identification methods and results.

Growling, he slammed it back down and strongly reconsidered retirement. "What's the matter?" Juliet blurted, staring over at him with a startled expression. "What are you reading? What is that?"

It took him a moment to speak through his clenched teeth. "Tox report."

"From what?"

"Nothing."

She scooted her chair away from her desk and came over to look over his shoulder. "I ought to have them fired," Lassiter grumbled, not bothering to hide it from view.

She'd only scanned it a moment before she started. "You sent a _muffin_ down to toxicology?"

"I had legitimate concerns that it'd been tampered with," he said testily, grabbing his key ring and scooting through it to find the miniature one that opened his bottom drawer. "When you're a high-profile detective like me, you can't afford to be too trusting."

"This was two weeks ago?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"A blueberry muffin? On the corner of your desk?"

"Yeah. So?"

Juliet's voice leapt up half an octave. "Carlton, _I_ gave you that muffin!"

He paused with the key in the keyhole. "Really?"

" _Yes,_ really!"

"Oh." Well. That changed things. In light of this and also the fact that assault had already landed him in hot water this week, Lassiter made a mental note to instead make trouble for the techs in smaller, more terrifying ways. He finished turning the key and popped the lock, then slid the drawer out. An array of manila folders stood waiting inside for his perusal. "Thank you, O'Hara."

"Thank you'?" Juliet looked utterly flabbergasted.

"Yes. It was…" He considered the proper qualifier as he thumbed through the files. "Thoughtful."

"You sent it down to toxicology!"

"Well, yeah, of course."

"You didn't even ask me where it might have come from?"

"Why should I?" Lassiter asked, genuinely baffled. "Why sneak it onto my desk? You could have just told me you'd brought it and then it would've been fine. Why are you blaming me?"

Juliet's mouth opened and shut for a while. "It was just to be cute," she stammered. "I wanted to do something nice for you and not be all obvious about it. Like a secret Santa."

"But it's not Christmas."

"It doesn't have to be Christmas. People do it for their colleagues all the time."

"If they do, they leave a note telling who it's from. Especially in a police station stocked with people who want to kill us. Why were you trying to be cute?"

"I…" She continued to visibly struggle for a response until her face finally darkened. Before he could stop her, she snatched the folder up, whapped him on the top of the head with it, and thrust her index finger in his face before he could recover. "I'm getting you a muffin tomorrow morning," she snapped. "And when you find it on your desk, _you're going to eat it._ No toxicology, no paranoia, no 'I already ate' because I don't care if you ate. And when I say, 'I see you've had a good breakfast this morning,' _you're_ going to say, 'That's because you brought me breakfast', and this time I'm not going to feel like a _total moron_ for bringing it up. Okay?"

"Okay," Lassiter blurted reflexively, frozen in place with surprise and maybe a little terror. And apparently because he was a masochist, he heard himself add, "I like cinnamon better."

"I'll get you cinnamon. And you're going to eat it. _Because it will be yummy._ "

"Okay."

She kept her finger in place a moment longer, as if making sure he saw it. Still clutching the file, she backed up slowly until she reached her desk, dumped the file into the trash, and flounced into her seat. Ignoring the stares of trepidation from the officers around her, she flipped her bangs out of her face and rearranged them behind her ears fussily, then went to work without another word.

Lassiter shut the drawer, locked it, and reviewed his life choices as he booted up his computer. He braced himself ten minutes later when Juliet checked in with him to confirm some data on the case, but she was entirely devoid of her earlier irritation, perky and businesslike as she pulled up a chair next to his desk.

If he was being honest with himself… Lassiter didn't complete the train of thought, but he was once again distracted by the way the sunlight from his desk window found places to burrow in her hair. If he was being honest, it simultaneously reassured him and humiliated him that Juliet, unlike him, was able to cast aside personal irritants to focus on the case at hand. She'd be a brilliant and unstoppable force in the department someday, and she'd get there with or without him. The fact that she wanted to advance alongside him rather than in front of him was a preference, not a requirement. _He_ was her preference. Flaws and all.

He wasn't in the mood to give either of them props for that, so he settled for griping at her squirrel-like energy while handing over the requested files anyway. It required a certain level of mental dual-wielding but there you went. She was adaptable and so was he, apparently.

* * *

.

Cleaning his house took the better part of two evenings. He helped himself along with modest applications of locally brewed beers and an oldies station cranked up to eleven, singing along only when he was sure every window was closed and every drape was pulled.

He'd just finished placing what figures had survived the rampage – the antique musical couple with Dresdon lace and beautiful detailing, the Lenox snowman bearing gifts, and the Murano glass roosters, thank god – next to the collie already on the mantle when his phone rang at his side. He instinctively slapped at it, hissed when the action sent a spike of pain up his wrist, and managed to awkwardly slide it out of its holder on the fifth ring. "Lassiter."

" _Oh._ " Lucinda sounded vaguely startled. " _Sorry. I expected to get your voicemail._ "

"I'm cleaning. Are you at home?"

" _I just got in. You're cleaning this late at night?_ "

"What?" But a glance over at his grandfather clock revealed that it was nearly midnight. Normally he went to bed at 10:15 and read until 10:30. He didn't even feel tired. "I must have lost track of time. What's wrong?"

" _You always ask that,_ " she laughed. " _You know people call to check up on other people, right? Just to see how they are? It isn't always an emergency._ "

"If you're calling to check up, why would you do it when you thought I was asleep?"

" _I thought you would appreciate the subtlety._ "

"Calling at midnight is subtle?"

" _I was going to leave a message. Sometimes people appreciate a thoughtful note rather than a conversation._ "

"You sent me a note?"

" _You know what, let's start over,"_ Lucinda said. " _Hello. I'm Lucinda. How was your day._ "

"I got commended for a job I didn't do," Lassiter said. "Tell me your day had more meaningful accomplishments."

" _I sat through a stakeout with a bladder infection._ "

"Did you bring a can?" He'd never understood how women did those things. He'd mentioned those little devices he'd seen in the drugstore to her – the plastic bowl things with a spout on the end for women to help direct the stream of their urine – but the response she'd given him had been so frigid he hadn't brought it up again for fear of turning her into an enemy agent.

" _No, but that's about the only thing I_ didn't _pee into. What was the job?_ "

"A wedding murder."

" _And you say you_ didn't _solve it?_ "

"Apparently I 'helped'," Lassiter said. "I'm getting participation awards now. This is what my career has come to."

" _And I assume Shawn solved it?_ "

"Yes."

" _Most everyone in a wedding party wants to kill each other by the end of it all anyway, so everybody ends up being the main suspect,_ " Lucinda said. " _I wouldn't worry about it. Listen, I know it's a bit late, but do you have time to talk about something with me?_ "

"No," Lassiter said, instantly wary of any conversation that began with 'we have to talk'. "Can't it wait?"

" _It can and it can't. As long as I've got you, I'd rather just get it out of the way._ "

Resigned, Lassiter went to the kitchen to get himself a glass of water. " _Did you read the e-mail?_ " Lucinda asked. " _From Victoria?_ "

"Yes. What about it?"

" _Are you okay?_ "

"Of course I'm okay."

It was utterly silent on the other end of the line. Lassiter wondered where she was. Definitely not in the kitchen, where she couldn't walk around without banging into things. " _Are you sure?_ " Lucinda asked at last, just when he thought the connection had been lost.

"Of course."

" _No damage?_ "

He accidentally knocked the handle of the Brita pitcher against the upper lip of the refrigerator and winced in exasperation when a jolt of pain once again went through his palm. "A few ceramic civilians. Nothing that can't be reordered."

" _Oh, Carlton._ "

"Don't do that."

" _I should've been there._ "

"Yeah, well, you know what, I'm dealing," he snapped. "I've dealt with it. _Without you_. That's what you wanted, right? And how the hell did you know about it before I did, anyway?"

" _Because she likes e-mailing me to stick things to me, and no, it's not what I wanted, by the way,_ " Lucinda said. " _I've already apologized over and over for that. Stop trying to make everything about it._ _You're crazy if you think I've ever done anything with the deliberate intention of hurting you._ "

He already hated this conversation. He poured himself the water, jammed the Brita back in, and slammed the door. " _Stop it,_ " Lucinda said sharply. " _I didn't call to fight you._ "

"Then what do you want? Spit it out, it's late."

" _I want to see if you're all right—_ "

"I _am_ all right!"

Lucinda stopped talking. Realizing he'd yelled, Lassiter set the glass down and sagged against the kitchen counter, kneading his forehead with the back of his wrist. "I am all right," he repeated, forcing his volume down. "I am. I'm fine."

Lucinda was silent again. His kitchen seemed preternaturally still in the wake of his own anger. For a long minute, the tocking from the clock in the other room was the only sound in the house. "I still can't figure it out." Lassiter hadn't realized he'd intended to speak until he heard the words come out of his mouth. "I've gone over and over it. It still doesn't add up."

" _Carlton—_ "

"I confronted the chief after you left. I asked her why she transferred you out of the station instead of just reassigning you. You could've chosen another partner or gone into another division. Even just a temp. A few months and it would've blown over. She was ready to handwave the whole thing. The reassignment would've just been a formality."

Lucinda didn't respond. There was no sound on the other end. Lassiter could feel the blood in his face, warming his neck and pounding in his ears, but he forced his tone to remain even. "You transferred out for no reason. All the way to Oregon. You snuck out the back door and you left without saying a word to me. So forgive me for being confused as to why you think you didn't hurt me."

Lucinda repeated, " _I already apologized for this._ "

"Great. That makes it all better. Thanks."

" _And to answer your question, she did ask me. I didn't want to be reassigned within the station._ "

"Why? What the hell? What do I do with that?" Lassiter demanded, suddenly desperate. "For god's sake, Barry, you can't expect me to forgive you when you won't even explain why you did it. Give me something to work with. This isn't fair."

She was silent for a very long time. " _You're right,_ " she said, almost too softly to hear. " _It's not. But Carlton, I want you to think about it._ Really _think about it, and what would have happened to us if I'd stayed._ "

He had thought about it. Every moment of every day for the past month he'd thought about it, until every golden highlight in Juliet's hair and every tolerant smile had brought him back to the same personalized hell of his own making. "Don't twist this around."

" _I'm not. Whether the chief handwaved it or not, there wouldn't have been any going back to the way things used to be. I would've gotten reassigned, and you still would've gotten a new partner. And then I would've had to watch, slowly but surely, as you got used to your partner, and grew to count on her, and grew to like her – god forbid you actually admit to it – and eventually recognize her for the competent detective that she is. And slowly but surely, my place would have disappeared._ "

What. Lassiter felt himself squeezing the phone so hard he could hear it creak. It took him a solid ten seconds to find words. "You left me high and dry because you were _jealous?_ "

" _I left to protect myself,_ " Lucinda said. " _And you. Carlton, you're not a machine. I know you like to think you are, but the fact is, you're the most loyal, dedicated person I know. You get… attached to people. When someone tries to take them from you, you panic and dig in your heels. Look at this thing with Victoria. She's told you it's over, and I'll bet you anything you're still thinking of ways to get back together with her._ "

"She's my wife, of course I'm going to try to get back together."

" _She's already told you it's over. You've known for years it wasn't working._ "

"Why are we talking about this?"

" _My point is, you would have gotten used to O'Hara in my place, and when the time came for you to decide whether or not to switch back, it would've been impossible for you to decide. Old loyalty versus new._ _It would've torn us apart. I didn't want to be there for that. I didn't want that for myself, and I didn't want it for you._ "

"Great, so now you're a selfless martyr," Lassiter said. "I'm hanging up. I've got better things to do."

" _You're already loyal to her and it's only been a couple of weeks. Can you imagine how difficult that choice would've been in a couple of months? A year?_ "

Halfway to the button to end the call, Lassiter paused when the memories of that night derailed his train of thought. Juliet with his blood on her clothes, not caring that his blood was on her clothes. Bandaging him up while simultaneously tearing open new holes. Her anger in his defense – _this is everything I ever wanted._ " _The problem is,_ " Lucinda said, " _you don't realize that people are capable of being loyal to you too. You spend so much time acting like an asshole that you're convinced everybody thinks the same way as you._ "

"Great, yes, let's go there too. Geez Louise."

" _I had an affair with a married man,_ " Lucinda said. " _That's not the kind of thing a little girl grows up dreaming about. It's not something I planned for. I loved you anyway._ _I was willing to hurt your wife and jeopardize my career to make it happen._ "

"Don't." He didn't know why, but suddenly this hurt like hell and he was willing to do anything to make it stop. "Don't do that."

" _You made the push, but I wanted it. I just never told you because I didn't want you to think less of me._ "

"Don't."

" _In a way, I think we almost wanted to get caught._ _Feeling my hair in the interrogation room? It wouldn't have taken a psychic to see that. There was a mirror right behind us._ "

… right, there had been, hadn't there. It had some implications but he didn't have time to dwell on them. "Look, Barry—"

" _Oh, god,_ " she said. " _I'm laying myself bare to you. You can't you call me Lucinda once?_ "

"What? No."

" _Even after all that? You can't even say my name?_ "

"No. It's weird. And it's not the first time you've laid bare in front of me."

" _I hate you,_ " she laughed. It sounded like she was crying. " _You're impossible. I love you._ _You make things so hard._ "

It took him a long time to be able to speak. When he finally was, his voice came out nearly too rough to recognize. "Come back."

" _I can't. I'm happy here. It's what I needed._ "

"Please."

" _No,_ " she said. " _Carlton, she's good for you. She makes you think outside the box. What we had was fine at the time, but it got to the point where we stopped knowing how to push each other. We got comfortable. We took fewer chances. Between Shawn and O'Hara, I think you have the start of something really great._ _You just need to stop digging in your heels and holding onto the past._ "

"What about you?"

" _I need to stop holding on too._ "

This had gotten into soap opera territory really quickly, which meant he'd officially waded out far enough to risk getting dragged down by the undertow. "So you're dumping me," he said.

" _I'm not dumping you. I'm just not dating or sleeping with you._ "

"That's the same thing."

" _Okay, then I'm dumping you._ "

It hurt a lot. Lassiter sucked in a breath and let it out slowly, but the pressure still hurt his chest. " _Are you going to be okay?_ "

"This couldn't have waited until morning?"

" _You'll be a different person by morning,_ " Lucinda said. " _Every day that goes by, you're a little more different than how I left you. I guess I just wanted to make sure I still knew you well enough to remember what it is that I'm losing._ "

He didn't bother trying to parse that. Women were utterly untranslatable. He was still surprised he'd managed to find the right combination of words to get Victoria to marry him. "So now what?"

" _There's a Happy Days marathon on. My bladder won't let me sleep for more than a half an hour at a time, so the rest of the night and most of tomorrow is pretty much laid out for me._ _Make up some popcorn and get out your bourbon. We can take a shot for every crab we see crawling out from the abyss behind Fonzie's zipper._ "

"You're not drinking with a bladder infection."

" _That's why I said for_ you _get out the bourbon. I'm going full cranberry juice on the rocks._ "

"Extravagant," he said. "Forget it. I'm not wasting my minutes on that. You need to go to bed."

"… _I can hear you getting out your popcorn popper._ "

Well sure he was, but that wasn't the point. "You don't need to be part of this equation, you know."

" _I'm not going anywhere,_ " Lucinda said, which was coincidentally everything he'd pretty much ever needed to hear from anyone. The fact that it was coming from a woman who'd already gone somewhere didn't alter the impact, apparently.


End file.
